Developing an image strengthening method for improving the contrast and colours of underwater photographs focused on haze removal

Underwater photos can be hindered by haze, which reduces visibility and makes it difficult to extract useful information. To address this, a crucial task in underwater image processing is removing haze, which can improve image quality and facilitate further analysis. This study introduces an image enhancement technique that combines haze removal with contrast and color enhancement to further enhance the visual quality of underwater photos. The proposed method first employs contrast enhancement and weight maps before applying white balance to the same input. Weight maps are again applied to the white-balanced image before a fusion technique is used to merge the results of the previous steps. Experimental findings demonstrate that this approach successfully enhances the overall visual quality, contrast, and colour of underwater photos.