transformation to match color profiles between two photos

Question

I have a set of photos X taken with camera 1 and a set of photos Y taken with camera 2 of the same objects. I want to find a transformation such that when I apply it to a photo Xi, the output will be the same as photo Yi (for a given object i).

I did not take the photos, but I'm assuming the photos in X were taken with bad or artificial lighting, whereas the photos in Y have good natural light.

I want to eventually make a browser extension by which I can right click on an image and select "apply color transformation" for this specific transformation. But to start, just figuring out how to do it in GIMP or Photoshop would be great.

Here's an example of the bad color followed by the good color. I have many elements in X and Y of varying colors in order to tune the transformation.

Answer 1

I can suggest you this script, it will adjust colours to match in average:

https://gist.github.com/1711451

Don't expect it to do magic if your images are not exactly similar or if some of them are badly exposed.

Your “bad” image modified (average colours and intensity match “good” image almost exactly). Please note, that it doesn't make them “correct”, it just matches the overall image tint. Another approach might be to match only white colours...