METHOD & APPARATUS FOR REDUCING COLOR LEAKAGE ARTEFACTS DURING POINT CLOUD COLOR PROCESSING

A method for reducing color leaking artefacts in an image formed by projection processing from a 3D point cloud comprises: receiving an input image comprising the 3D point cloud; classifying the cloud into a plurality of surface patches; projecting the patches onto a plane to form a first 2D image; processing the first 2D image, by coding, transmitting and decoding, to form a final 2D image; and providing the final 2D image as an output. Processing includes independent patch processing to reduce inter-patch color leakage in the final 2D image, the independent patch processing including chroma sub-sampling pixels within each of the projected patches in the first 2D image separately; recombining the chroma sub-sampled patches to form a second 2D image; and compressing the second 2D image.