Capturing accurate colors underwater with consumer digital cameras

Every COTS digital camera captures images in its own RGB (red, green and blue) color space. Transforming these images to a device-independent color space is done through a transformation matrix. For land photography, the transformation from the camera color space to human color space is usually done through the use of photographic calibration targets, such as a Macbeth ColorChecker. Transforming raw images recorded by COTS digital cameras to a device- independent color space is usually done through a three-by-three transformation matrix that relates the camera color space to the human color space. While cameras have built-in software that perform this transformation, they do so without the knowledge of the colors in the scene, the ambient light conditions or the specific sensor in the camera. Colors will only be as accurate as the color transformation matrix. The CIE 1931 XYZ color space is commonly used as a device-independent space into which camera RGB values are mapped.