An Efficient Algorithm for Luminance Optimization in Chroma Downsampling

The classical chroma subsampling involves downsampling chrominance components (U and V) while maintaining the luminance component (Y). Recently, a study has attempted to change Y for the chroma-subsampling process, and improved results in the reconstructed image quality are obtained. However, computational complexity remains an issue because the study examines all the candidates in the determined range for minimal pixel distortion for the modified Y; the complexity can be high if the range is large. In this study, we reduced the candidate number to seven at most, which is mathematically optimized. Boundary points for in-the-range red, green, and blue (RGB) values are first decided, followed by the determination of the intervals that concatenate the entire curve (at most seven intervals). Each interval belongs to one of the seven sub-cases of different linear combinations of individual curves. The optimal solution (modified Y) for each sub-case is derived, which is in highly efficient form. Compared with the existing method, the proposed fast method ensures that the image quality is preserved, while the number of search candidates is reduced by 61.30%–69.19% on average, and the computational time of the process is reduced by 31.39%–58.97%, thereby demonstrating an efficient performance.