Colour Adjustment of Aerial Images from 2000–3000 m Altitude: Empirical Normalisation using Large Ground Colour Targets

Abstract. High-altitude aerial image national mosaics often exhibit visible colour and tone differences caused by atmospheric variability, illumination changes, sensor differences and post-processing workflows. These radiometric inconsistencies negatively influence both visual quality and the comparability of image data across sensors, time and campaigns. This work presents an empirical two-step colour adjustment and radiometric normalisation method for imagery acquired from 2000–3000 m altitude using a large multi-colour ground target designed to provide stable, spatially robust reference statistics. Field reflectance values are measured with a handheld spectrometer and converted to CIELAB coordinates. A global 3D similarity (Helmert) transform aligns measured image colours to ground-truth CIELAB values, followed by local residual chromatic correction using inverse distance weighting. Experiments on aerial datasets demonstrate that the method significantly reduces colour discrepancies at the calibration site.