In luminance priority multilayer color film, one of the layers substantially matches the luminance sensitivity of the human eye. This luminance layer distinguishes from prior art color films that have a blue, a green, and a red sensitive layer. This luminance layer has the priority front position to sense light before being diffused and attenuated by other layers, giving the luminance record enhanced speed and clarity compared to prior art blue-priority color film. In another embodiment, a layered CCD sensor has a top silicon layer that is sensitive to all colors, followed by a yellow filter, a second silicon layer responsive to green and red light only because of the yellow filter, a cyan filter, and a bottom silicon layer receiving only green light. An image from a luminance-priority color sensor inputs to a color space conversion to recover full color. In the preferred embodiment, a luminance layer on top maps to a luminance 'Y' value, and underlying color sensitive layers are used in conjunction with the luminance to derive the 'U' and 'V' chrominance vectors of YUV color space.
Luminance-priority electronic color image sensor