Off the Planckian Locus: Using 2D Chromaticity to Improve In-Camera Color

TL;DR

This paper introduces a 2D chromaticity-based approach for in-camera color correction that outperforms traditional CCT-based methods, especially under non-Planckian LED lighting, enabling more accurate and robust color reproduction.

Contribution

It proposes replacing 1D CCT interpolation with a lightweight MLP using 2D chromaticity features, improving color accuracy under diverse lighting conditions.

Findings

Reduces angular reproduction error by 22% on average in LED-lit scenes.

Maintains compatibility with traditional illuminants and multi-illuminant scenes.

Supports real-time in-camera deployment with minimal computational overhead.

Abstract

Traditional in-camera colorimetric mapping relies on correlated color temperature (CCT)-based interpolation between pre-calibrated transforms optimized for Planckian illuminants such as CIE A and D65. However, modern lighting technologies such as LEDs can deviate substantially from the Planckian locus, exposing the limitations of relying on conventional one-dimensional CCT for illumination characterization. This paper demonstrates that transitioning from 1D CCT (on the Planckian locus) to a 2D chromaticity space (off the Planckian locus) improves colorimetric accuracy across various mapping approaches. In addition, we replace conventional CCT interpolation with a lightweight multi-layer perceptron (MLP) that leverages 2D chromaticity features for robust colorimetric mapping under non-Planckian illuminants. A lightbox-based calibration procedure incorporating representative LED sources is used to train our MLP. Validated across diverse LED lighting, our method reduces angular reproduction error by 22% on average in LED-lit scenes, maintains backward compatibility with traditional illuminants, accommodates multi-illuminant scenes, and supports real-time in-camera deployment with negligible additional computational cost.