Color sensors from ams can be used to help a camera’s image processing algorithm to take the best white-balanced picture in scenes where it is prone to fail.

 

Although cameras’ image processing algorithms have improved dramatically, their automatic white balance (AWB) algorithms can fail under certain conditions. AWB failures occur when a scene is dominated by one color, or in mixed lighting environments in which there is a combination of natural sunlight and artificial lighting. This is because they need to correct for the color of the light source, but cannot directly measure it.

 

The TCS3400 RGB+IR and TCS3430 XYZ+2IR color sensors from ams sense light over a hemispherical field-of-view when placed behind a diffuser – a field of view similar to that of the human eye – and more accurately capture light from all of the ambient light sources, thus dramatically improving the white balance of an image.

Single zone 1D Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensors can be used for front-facing camera auto-focus assist, providing accurate and fast measurement of the distance to an object. This produces fast in-focus pictures. When used together with 3D sensing systems, ams’s 1D ToF sensing technology supports accurate object distance ranging to ensure that background blur or replacement effects are are optimized by the camera algorithm.