High dynamic range imaging techniques involve capturing and storing real world radiance values that span many orders of magnitude. However, common display devices can usually reproduce intensity ranges only up to two to three orders of magnitude. Therefore, in order to display a high dynamic range image on a low dynamic range screen, the dynamic range of the image needs to be compressed without losing details or introducing artefacts, and this process is called tone mapping. A good tone mapping operator must be able to produce a low dynamic range image that matches as much as possible the perception of the real world scene. We propose a two stage tone mapping approach, in which the first stage is a global method for range compression based on a gamma curve that equalizes the lightness histogram the best, and the second stage performs local contrast enhancement and color induction using neural activity models for the visual cortex.

Date Published: 17 March 2015
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 9394, Human Vision and Electronic Imaging XX, 93941I (17 March 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2081212

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9394:
Human Vision and Electronic Imaging XX
Bernice E. Rogowitz; Thrasyvoulos N. Pappas; Huib de Ridder, Editor(s)