Take a look at the new version of this page: [ beta version ]. Tell us what you think.

ABSTRACT

High dynamic range (HDR) imaging is an area of increasing importance, but most display devices still have limited dynamic range (LDR). Various techniques have been proposed for compressing the dynamic range while retaining important visual information. Multi-scale image processing techniques, which are widely used for many image processing tasks, have a reputation of causing halo artifacts when used for range compression. However, we demonstrate that they can work when properly implemented. We use a symmetrical analysis-synthesis filter bank, and apply local gain control to the subbands. We also show that the technique can be adapted for the related problem of "companding", in which an HDR image is converted to an LDR image, and later expanded back to high dynamic range.

REFERENCES

• 1: Adelson, E. H., Simoncelli, E., and Hingorani, R. 1987. Orthogonal pyramid transforms for image coding. In Visual Communications and Image Processing II, Proc. SPIE, vol. 845, 50--58.
• 2: Paul E. Debevec , Jitendra Malik, Recovering high dynamic range radiance maps from photographs, Proceedings of the 24th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.369-378, August 1997 [doi>10.1145/258734.258884]
• 3: Devlin, K., Chalmers, A., Wilkie, A., and Purgathofer, W. 2002. Star: Tone reproduction and physically based spectral rendering. In: State of the Art Reports, Eurographics (September), 101--123.
• 4: Dicarlo, J. M., and Wandell, B. A. 2001. Rendering high dynamic range images. In In Proceedings of the SPIE: Image Sensors, vol. 3965, 392--401.
• 5: Frédo Durand , Julie Dorsey, Fast bilateral filtering for the display of high-dynamic-range images, ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), v.21 n.3, July 2002 [doi>10.1145/566654.566574]
• 6: Raanan Fattal , Dani Lischinski , Michael Werman, Gradient domain high dynamic range compression, ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), v.21 n.3, July 2002 [doi>10.1145/566654.566573]
• 7: James A. Ferwerda , Sumanta N. Pattanaik , Peter Shirley , Donald P. Greenberg, A model of visual adaptation for realistic image synthesis, Proceedings of the 23rd annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.249-258, August 1996 [doi>10.1145/237170.237262]
• 8: Heeger, D. J. 1992. Half-squaring in responses of cat simple cells. Visual Neurosci. 9, 427--443.
• 9: IJG. Independent JPEG Group. http://www.ijg.org/files/.
• 10: Jobson, D. J., Rahman, Z., and Woodell, G. A. 1997. A multi-scale retinex for bridging the gap between color images and the human observation of scenes. IEEE Transactions on Image Processing 6, 7 (July), 965--976.
• 11: Labaere, F., and Vuylsteke, P., 1998. Image contrast enhancing method. U. S. Patent no. 5,717,791.
• 12: Land, E. H., and McCann, J. J. 1971. Lightness and retinex theory. Journal of the Optical Society of America 61, 1 (Jan), 1--11.
• 13: Gregory Ward Larson , Holly Rushmeier , Christine Piatko, A Visibility Matching Tone Reproduction Operator for High Dynamic Range Scenes, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, v.3 n.4, p.291-306, October 1997 [doi>10.1109/2945.646233]
• 14: Lee, H.-C., 2001. Automatic tone adjustment by contrast gain-control on edges. United States Patent 6,285.798, September.
• 15: Stephane Mallat , Sifen Zhong, Characterization of Signals from Multiscale Edges, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, v.14 n.7, p.710-732, July 1992 [doi>10.1109/34.142909]
• 16: Mallat, S. 1998. A Wavelet Tour of Signal Processing. New York: Academic.
• 17: Mann, S., and Picard, R. 1995. Being 'undigital' with digital cameras: Extending dynamic range by combining differently exposed pictures. In IS&T's 48th annual conference, 422--428.
• 18: Mitsunaga, T., and Nayar, S. K., 2000. High dynamic range imaging: Spatially varying pixel exposures. In IEEE CVPR, 472--479.
• 19: Nakazawa, Masayuki, Tsuchino, and Hisanori, 1995. Method of compressing a dynamic range for a radiation image. United States Patent 5,471,987.
• 20: Sumanta N. Pattanaik , James A. Ferwerda , Mark D. Fairchild , Donald P. Greenberg, A multiscale model of adaptation and spatial vision for realistic image display, Proceedings of the 25th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.287-298, July 1998 [doi>10.1145/280814.280922]
• 21: Peli, E. 1990. Contrast in complex images. J. Opt. Soc. Am. A. 7, 10, 2032--2040.
• 22: Erik Reinhard , Kate Devlin, Dynamic Range Reduction Inspired by Photoreceptor Physiology, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, v.11 n.1, p.13-24, January 2005 [doi>10.1109/TVCG.2005.9]
• 23: Erik Reinhard , Michael Stark , Peter Shirley , James Ferwerda, Photographic tone reproduction for digital images, ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), v.21 n.3, July 2002 [doi>10.1145/566654.566575]
• 24: Helge Seetzen , Wolfgang Heidrich , Wolfgang Stuerzlinger , Greg Ward , Lorne Whitehead , Matthew Trentacoste , Abhijeet Ghosh , Andrejs Vorozcovs, High dynamic range display systems, ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), v.23 n.3, August 2004 [doi>10.1145/1015706.1015797]
• 25: Stockham, T. 1972. Image processing in the context of a visual model. Proc. IEEE 60, 828--842.
• 26: C. Tomasi , R. Manduchi, Bilateral Filtering for Gray and Color Images, Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Computer Vision, p.839, January 04-07, 1998
• 27: Jack Tumblin , Holly Rushmeier, Tone Reproduction for Realistic Images, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, v.13 n.6, p.42-48, November 1993 [doi>10.1109/38.252554]
• 28: Jack Tumblin , Greg Turk, LCIS: a boundary hierarchy for detail-preserving contrast reduction, Proceedings of the 26th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.83-90, July 1999 [doi>10.1145/311535.311544]
• 29: (Jack) John Erwin Tumblin , Greg Turk, Three methods of detail-preserving contrast reduction for displayed images, 1999
• 30: Vuylsteke, P., and Schoeters, E., 1998. Method and apparatus for contrast enhancement. U. S. Patent no. 5,805,721.
• 31: Greg Ward , Maryann Simmons, Subband encoding of high dynamic range imagery, Proceedings of the 1st Symposium on Applied perception in graphics and visualization, August 07-08, 2004, Los Angeles, California [doi>10.1145/1012551.1012566]
• 32: Gregory J. Ward, The RADIANCE lighting simulation and rendering system, Proceedings of the 21st annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.459-472, July 1994 [doi>10.1145/192161.192286]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.4 IMAGE PROCESSING AND COMPUTER VISION
      I.4.3 Enhancement

Additional Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.3 COMPUTER GRAPHICS
      I.3.3 Picture/Image Generation

Keywords:
companding, high dynamic range, multiresolution, multiscale, range compression, subbands, tone mapping, wavelets