High dynamic range (HDR) imaging seems to have developed to a level of soon being a standard feature in consumer cameras. This study was motivated by the need for evaluating tone mapping operators especially for consumer imaging applications. A no-reference method based on ISO 20462-2:2005 triplet comparison was created for evaluating tone mapping operators. Multiple HDR test images were photographed and the method was validated by evaluating 25 tone mapping operators with five test images. Tone mapping operators were evaluated based on image naturalness and pleasantness. The results indicate that the method successfully ranked the method in terms of naturalness and pleasantness. The test image set could be improved for example based on an imaging photo space for HDR photography. The test images of this study are available for non-commercial research purposes.

Date Published: 24 January 2011
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 7876, Digital Photography VII, 78760O (24 January 2011); doi: 10.1117/12.872006

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7876:
Digital Photography VII
Francisco H. Imai; Feng Xiao, Editor(s)