Tania Pouli

Extended papers from NPAR 2010: Progressive color transfer for images of arbitrary dynamic range

Image manipulation takes many forms. A powerful approach involves image adjustment by example. To make color edits more intuitive, the intelligent transfer of a user-specified target images color palette can achieve a multitude of creative effects, provided the user is supplied with a small set of straightforward parameters. We present a novel histogram reshaping technique which allows significantly better control than previous methods and transfers the color palette between images of arbitrary dynamic range. We achieve this by manipulating histograms at different scales, which allows coarse and fine features to be considered separately. We compare our approach to a number of existing color transfer and tonemapping techniques and demonstrate its performance for a wide range of images.

Progressive histogram reshaping for creative color transfer and tone reproduction

Image manipulation takes many forms. A powerful approach involves image adjustment by example. To make color edits more intuitive, the intelligent transfer of a user-specified target images color palette can achieve a multitude of creative effects, provided the user is supplied with a small set of straightforward parameters. We present a novel histogram reshaping technique which allows significantly more control than previous methods. Given that the user is free to chose any image as the target, the process of steering the algorithm becomes artistic. Moreover, we show for the first time that creative tone reproduction can be achieved by matching a high dynamic range image against a low dynamic range target.

Calibrated image appearance reproduction

Managing the appearance of images across different display environments is a difficult problem, exacerbated by the proliferation of high dynamic range imaging technologies. Tone reproduction is often limited to luminance adjustment and is rarely calibrated against psychophysical data, while color appearance modeling addresses color reproduction in a calibrated manner, albeit over a limited luminance range. Only a few image appearance models bridge the gap, borrowing ideas from both areas. Our take on scene reproduction reduces computational complexity with respect to the state-of-the-art, and adds a spatially varying model of lightness perception. The predictive capabilities of the model are validated against all psychophysical data known to us, and visual comparisons show accurate and robust reproduction for challenging high dynamic range scenes.

A Survey of Color Mapping and its Applications

Color mapping or color transfer methods aim to recolor a given image or video by deriving a mapping between that image and another image serving as a reference. This class of methods has received considerable attention in recent years, both in academic literature and in industrial applications. Methods for recoloring images have often appeared under the labels of color correction, color transfer or color balancing, to name a few, but their goal is always the same: mapping the colors of one image to another. In this report, we present a comprehensive overview of these methods and offer a classification of current solutions depending not only on their algorithmic formulation but also their range of applications. We discuss the relative merit of each class of techniques through examples and show how color mapping solutions can and have been applied to a diverse range of problems.

Colour spaces for colour transfer

Colour transfer algorithms aim to apply a colour palette, mood or style from one image to another, operating either in a threedimensional colour space, or splitting the problem into three simpler one-dimensional problems. The latter class of algorithms simply treats each of the three dimensions independently, whether justified or not. Although they rarely introduce spatial artefacts, the quality of the results depends on how the problem was split into three sub-problems, i.e. which colour space was chosen. Generally, the assumption is made that a decorrelated colour space would perform best, as decorrelation makes the three colour channels semi-independent (decorrelation is a weaker property than independence). However, such spaces are only decorrelated for well-chosen image ensembles. For individual images, this property may not hold. In this work, the connection between the natural statistics of colour images and the ability of existing colour transfer algorithms to produce plausible results is investigated. This work aims to provide a better understanding of the performance of different colour spaces in the context of colour transfer.

Image Statistics and their Applications in Computer Graphics

The statistics of natural images have attracted the attention of researchers in a variety of fields and have been used as a means to better understand the human visual system and its processes. A number of algorithms in computer graphics, vision and image processing take advantage of such statistical findings to create visually more plausible results. With this report we aim to review the state of the art in image statistics and discuss existing and potential applications within computer graphics and related areas.

Evaluation of color encodings for high dynamic range pixels

Traditional Low Dynamic Range (LDR) color spaces encode a small fraction of the visible color gamut, which does not encompass the range of colors produced on upcoming High Dynamic Range (HDR) displays. Future imaging systems will require encoding much wider color gamut and luminance range. Such wide color gamut can be represented using floating point HDR pixel values but those are inefficient to encode. They also lack perceptual uniformity of the luminance and color distribution, which is provided (in approximation) by most LDR color spaces. Therefore, there is a need to devise an efficient, perceptually uniform and integer valued representation for high dynamic range pixel values. In this paper we evaluate several methods for encoding colour HDR pixel values, in particular for use in image and video compression. Unlike other studies we test both luminance and color difference encoding in a rigorous 4AFC threshold experiments to determine the minimum bit-depth required. Results show that the Perceptual Quantizer (PQ) encoding provides the best perceptual uniformity in the considered luminance range, however the gain in bit-depth is rather modest. More significant difference can be observed between color difference encoding schemes, from which YDuDv encoding seems to be the most efficient.

A Survey of Image Statistics Relevant to Computer Graphics

The statistics of natural images have attracted the attention of researchers in a variety of fields and have been used as a means to better understand the human visual system and its processes. A number of algorithms in computer graphics, vision and image processing take advantage of such statistical findings to create visually more plausible results. With this report we aim to review the state of the art in image statistics and discuss existing and potential applications within computer graphics and related areas.

Colour Mapping: A Review of Recent Methods, Extensions and Applications

The objective of colour mapping or colour transfer methods is to recolour a given image or video by deriving a mapping between that image and another image serving as a reference. These methods have received considerable attention in recent years, both in academic literature and industrial applications. Methods for recolouring images have often appeared under the labels of colour correction, colour transfer or colour balancing, to name a few, but their goal is always the same: mapping the colours of one image to another. In this paper, we present a comprehensive overview of these methods and offer a classification of current solutions depending not only on their algorithmic formulation but also their range of applications. We also provide a new dataset and a novel evaluation technique called ‘evaluation by colour mapping roundtrip’. We discuss the relative merit of each class of techniques through examples and show how colour mapping solutions can have been applied to a diverse range of problems.

Statistical regularities in low and high dynamic range images

Computer graphics as well as related disciplines often benefit from understanding the human visual system and its input. In this paper, we study statistical regularities of both conventional as well as high dynamic range images, and find that several commonly held wisdoms regarding natural image statistics do not directly apply to high dynamic range data. These results have implications for both the study of human vision, as well as for the design of algorithms in computer graphics and computer vision that rely on such statistical regularities.