1. A method for determining and correcting for background color of a document, comprising: obtaining a digital representation of the document, the digital representation comprising a two-dimensional array of color elements, the color of each of which is specified by the combination of three color component values, the range of values of the color components defining a input color space containing a plurality of colors; quantizing the color component values of the color elements, dividing the input color space into a set of bins, each of which includes a subset of colors in the input color space, and assigning each color in the digital representation to a particular one of the bins to obtain a summary of the distribution of colors in the digital representation; obtaining, for each bin, statistical information that is indicative color component characteristics of colors in the bin; identifying each bin that constitutes a color peak based on at least some of the statistical information; determining a region of influence for each color peak with respect to bins that are not color peaks; determining the color peak corresponding to the background color of the document according to predetermined decision-making rules that take into consideration the statistical information and region of influence determination; and constructing a one-dimensional look-up table for each color component that correlates input color space values for that color component with corresponding output color space values.