A method for the automatic reproduction of the colors of an original scene from
an original image present as a color negative or diapositive film includes scanning
the original image electronically, and storing the RGB color values of the image
points as scanned transmissions or scanned densities. In the RGB color space, a
gray straight line is determined, which approximates the cloud of points formed
by the scanned densities of the image points in an optimum way. The transmissions
are corrected by minimum transmission values in each case being subtracted from
the scanned transmissions. Then, reconstructed film exposures are determined, whereby,
by the gray straight line, film exposure straight lines are constructed that describe
the relationship between the logarithmic film exposures and the corrected densities.
Following the normalization of the film exposures to a standard image range, the
film exposures are transformed into the LAB color space.
