In this work, we propose several improvements of the inverse compositional algorithm for parametric registration. We propose an improved handling of boundary pixels, a different color handling and gradient estimation, and the possibility to skip scales in the multiscale coarse-to-fine scheme. In an experimental part, we analyze the influence of the modifications. The estimation accuracy is at least improved by a factor 1.3 while the computation time is at least reduced by a factor 2.2 for color images.