A method of color image processing comprises at least the following steps: the color image is converted into an intermediate image comprising components that depend solely on the H and S components of the original image in an HSV or HLS representation; the intermediate image comprising at least two components X and Y, determined by functions especially of the H component, these functions taking the same value when the H component is zero or equal to one; a new image comprising only one component is generated from the intermediate image, the component of this new image being a function of the components of the intermediate image. The disclosed method can be applied especially to the heightening of contrast in remote surveillance, and to image processing before segmentation in mobile robotics.