HDR compression based on image matting Laplacian

Abstract

By fusing a sequence of exposure images, we could generate a high dynamic range (HDR) image and enhance the image details. However, to display the HDR image on a low dynamic range (LDR) device, HDR compression is necessary. In the paper, a new method for HDR Compression based on matting Laplacian is proposed. The major assumption behind is that the tone-mapped LDR image must preserve the HDR local structure so that the image details could be well represented. Precisely, we treat the HDR image as a guidance image and embed the object structure of the HDR image into a matting Laplacian matrix. Further, we formulate HDR compression as an optimization problem. Through incorporating the matting Laplacian matrix into the objective function, the optimal LDR image is forced to have the similar local structures like the HDR image. Our experiments show the extracted LDR image could enhance the image details well without introducing severe edge effects or color artifacts.