In this article we show the change in paradigm occurred in color constancy algorithms: from a pre-processing step in image understanding, to the exploitation of image understanding and computer vision results and techniques. Since color constancy is an ill-posed problem, we give an overview of the assumptions on which classical color constancy algorithms are based in order to solve it. Then, we chronologically review the color constancy algorithms that exploit results and techniques borrowed from the image understanding research field in order to exploit assumptions that could be met in a larger number of images.