<title>Color space conversion for linear color grading</title>

Color grading is an important process for various industries such as food processing, fruit and vegetable grading, etc. Quality and price are often determined by the color of product. For example, darker red color for apples means higher price. In color machine vision applications, image is acquired with a color CCD camera that outputs color information in three channels, red, gree, and blue. When grading color, these three primary colors must be processed to determine the color level for separation. A very popular color space conversion technique for color image processing is RGB-to-HSI, where HSI represents hue, saturation, and intensity, respectively. However, the conversion result is still 3D information that makes determining color grades very difficult. A new color space conversion technique that can be implemented for high-speed real-time processing for color grading is introduced in this paper. Depending on the application, different color space conversion equations must be used. The result of this technique is a simple one-dimensional array that represents different color levels. This linear array makes linear color grading adjustment possible.