  In this work we describe a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to accurately
predict the scene illumination. Taking image patches as input, the CNN works in
the spatial domain without using hand-crafted features that are employed by
most previous methods. The network consists of one convolutional layer with max
pooling, one fully connected layer and three output nodes. Within the network
structure, feature learning and regression are integrated into one optimization
process, which leads to a more effective model for estimating scene
illumination. This approach achieves state-of-the-art performance on a standard
dataset of RAW images. Preliminary experiments on images with spatially varying
illumination demonstrate the stability of the local illuminant estimation
ability of our CNN.
