In various examples, image processing techniques are presented for reducing artifacts in images for autonomous or semi-autonomous systems and applications. Systems and methods are disclosed for deferring at least a portion of a strength associated with a color correction matrix (CCM) of an image processing pipeline to one or more other stages associated with the image processing pipeline. For instance, the CCM is used to determine a first CCM and a second, deferred CCM. The first CCM may be associated with an earlier stage of the image processing pipeline while the deferred CCM is associated with a later stage of the image processing pipeline. In some examples, the deferred CCM is combined with another matrix, such as a color space conversion matrix. By deferring part of the CCM, the image processing pipeline may reduce a number of artifacts and/or eliminate the artifacts that occur when processing image data.