APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR ENHANCING VISIBILITY OF COLOR IMAGE

An apparatus for enhancing the visibility of color images includes: a luminance value cumulative distribution calculator that calculates a cumulative distribution function of the number of pixels from a minimum value of luminance values; a baseband signal determining unit that determines baseband signal pixels having luminance values smaller than a threshold level; a luminance compensation value generator that generates luminance compensation values to apply the lower-level luminance compensation values as the pixels have higher-level luminance values, for the pixels having the luminance values larger than the threshold level; a luminance gain generator that determines a luminance gain applied to the luminance compensation values according to a mean luminance values of the input images and the level of the luminance values of the pixels to which the luminance compensation values are applied; and a luminance value enhancing unit that summing the luminance compensation values including the gain with the luminance values.