A new approach to sharpening color images using the moment-preserving
technique is proposed, An input image is processed pixel by pixel. By
preserving some color moments of the n x n neighborhood of each pixel,
analytic formulas are derived to compute two sets of (R, G, B) tristi
mulus values, and one of them is assigned to the pixel as the sharpeni
ng result. Cases with one or more uniform color components in the neig
hborhood are also treated. The proposed method preserves spatial detai
ls, and requires little memory and small computational load, The propo
sed sharpening operation can also be applied iteratively to the input
image to get better sharpening effect. Experimental results show that
the proposed approach is effective for color image sharpening.