In this paper, we propose a color image enhancement method that uses the CIELAB color space to improve the quality of degraded images for human visual perception. In our method, the lightness of a color image is enhanced, based on gamma correction, and the hue and chroma are preserved in the CIELAB color space. During this process, color gamut problem may occur while inversely converting the enhanced CIELAB color components to the RGB color space. Therefore, we introduce a color gamut adjustment to cope with this problem. In the color gamut adjustment, the chroma is changed while preserving the enhanced lightness and the hue so that the inversely converted CIELAB color components will exist inside the color gamut of the RGB color space. To illustrate the effectiveness of this method, experiments, using several digital images, are conducted.
