LAB color space has three channels: Lightness, Alpha, Beta. Alpha and Beta are
coordinates to determine the color regardless of luminous. So one thing you can
play with LAB is pickup objects in the image with the same color.

Too sad you cannot see this beautiful lady!
Figure 1. Atsuki's image, from left to right are original, with L=avg, with L=
100.

An APL algorithm to convert RGB to LAB can be implemented as:

 |{
 |     ⎕IO←1
 |     d←⍉D65÷⍨⍤1⊢RGB2XYZ+.×⍤99 1⊢⍉⍵÷255
 |     m←d>3*⍨6÷29
5 |     d←((~m)×(4÷29)+⍵÷3×2*⍨6÷29)+m×d*÷3
 |     (⍴⍵)⍴(16-⍨116×2⌷d)⍪(500×(1⌷d)-2⌷d)⍪200×(2⌷d)-3⌷d
 |  }

Where RGB2XYZ is the matrix

   0.49    0.31    0.2
[ 0.17697 0.8124 0.01063 ]
     0     0.01   0.99