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Samsung · Camera · Filed Dec 22, 2024 · USPTO published Jun 25, 2026 · Jun 25 release

Samsung Patents a Photo Color Fix That Sharpens Tones Where Human Eyes Notice Most

Most color correction systems treat every shade equally. Samsung's new patent argues that's a waste of resources, and builds a smarter map that spends more precision on the tones humans actually notice.

By · Updated · 3 min read

Samsung Patent: Non-Uniform 3D Color Lookup Table, figure from US 2026/0179338 A1
Figure from the official USPTO publication.
Publication number
US 2026/0179338 A1(US20260179338A1)
Applicant
SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD.
Filed · Published
Dec 22, 2024 · Jun 25, 2026
Inventors
Shuxue Quan
Status when we published
Waiting for an examiner
Document
20 claims
US classification
345/419
Examiner
TSENG, CHARLES (Art Unit 2613)

How Samsung's color table spends its budget wisely

Imagine a chef who seasons every dish with exactly the same amount of salt, no matter whether it's a delicate soup or a hearty stew. You'd end up with bland soup and a palatable stew, but you could have done better with both if you'd adjusted your approach. Color correction on screens and cameras has the same problem.

When a phone or TV adjusts colors, it often uses a kind of reference table, essentially a giant cheat sheet that says 'this input color should become that output color.' A standard table spreads its entries evenly across all possible shades. Samsung's patent describes a table that isn't even: it packs more entries (more precision) into the color ranges where small differences are easy to see, like mid-tone skin tones or natural greens, and uses fewer entries in ranges where your eyes are less discerning.

The result is that you get more accurate, natural-looking colors without needing a much larger or more expensive table. The same hardware budget buys you better-looking images.

Inside the non-uniform 3D LUT structure

The patent centers on a 3D lookup table (3D LUT), a data structure that maps every possible input color (defined by its red, green, and blue values) to a corrected output color. Think of it as a three-dimensional grid where each intersection point holds a color correction instruction.

A uniform 3D LUT places those grid points at perfectly even intervals across the full range from black to white. That's simple but wasteful: human vision is not uniformly sensitive across all brightness levels. We're much better at distinguishing subtle differences in mid-range tones than in very dark shadows or very bright highlights.

Samsung's patent describes a non-uniform 3D LUT, where the grid points are clustered more densely inside the ranges the device designates as first light ranges (high-priority zones) and spaced further apart in second light ranges (lower-priority zones). This can be done independently for the red, green, and blue channels, so the table can be tuned to where each color component needs the most accuracy.

A color correcting circuit then reads this table at runtime to transform each video frame from its raw captured state into a corrected output frame. The non-uniform layout means the circuit can achieve finer color accuracy in the zones that matter most without increasing the total size of the table.

What this means for Samsung display and camera quality

For consumers, this is about image quality on Samsung devices, whether that's a Galaxy phone camera pipeline, a QLED TV, or a monitor. By concentrating correction precision in visually sensitive tonal ranges, Samsung can produce more accurate skin tones and natural colors using hardware that doesn't cost more or consume more power than existing solutions.

For the industry, the patent stakes out intellectual property around the specific approach of making the LUT non-uniform across the RGB axes independently. Color science is a crowded field, but the particular architecture described here, a per-channel, variable-density 3D table tied to a dedicated correcting circuit, could give Samsung a defensible position in how color pipelines are built into its chips and display controllers.

Source: US 2026/0179338 A1 at the USPTO (PDF). Full patent text and figures are in the official publication.

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