throwaway_068

It's perfectly reasonable that image processing and television are optimized for accurate skin tones. But they are optimizing for light skin tones by using test images such as Lenna, the BBC's test image [A], and the BBC's "Flesh Tone Reference Card" [C]. I think this harms image quality for dark skin tones.

Television broadcast systems include automatic skin tone correction that "looks for colors in a specific [colorspace] area and any colors within that area are made a color that is closer to the skin tone." There's actually a "correct" skin tone and colors are adjusted to be closer to it. This is implemented in chips [D] for TV signal processing and even at the LCD panel controller level.

I've noticed reproduction of dark skin colors is much worse on video conferencing than light skin colors, so this isn't just a theoretical complaint.

[A] http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/shortcuts/2012/apr/2...

[B] http://www.videointerchange.com/color_correction1.htm

[C] http://my.safaribooksonline.com/book/-/9780750683951/chapter...

[D] Examples are the TDA884X PAL/NTSC/SECAM TV processors, SAA7154 video decoder, and the TW8817 LCD controller.