Automatically and adaptively controlling contrast and color of a display device by computing a normalized histogram of a current image, computing degrees of correlation between the normalized histogram and a number of template histograms, sorting the template histograms based upon the associated degrees of correlation, selecting a number of the best correlated template histograms based on the sorting, blending the selected the transfer functions associated with the selected template histograms to form a blended transfer function, and applying the blended transfer function to the current image.