Transfer textures and colors to low light level images

In this paper, we propose a method for texture and color enhancement of low light level (LLL) night vision images. We design a texture database in accordance with the features of LLL images based on mean shift smoothing and luminance transformation. Each pixel in an LLL image is classified using this texture database. After the classification, we use a novel texture and color overprint method to assign consistent textures and colors to the LLL image. That is, we replace the pixels of each class in the LLL image by the pixels in another high-resolution color image. The proposed method is simple and it does not require any color space transformation. It overcomes the achromatic, low resolution, low contrast and lack of fine textures problem of the LLL night vision images and improves the situational awareness of night vision images.