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Abstract

High Dynamic Range (HDR) images capture the full range of luminance present in real world scenes, and unlike Low Dynamic Range (LDR) images, can simultaneously contain detailed information in the deepest of shadows and the brightest of light sources. For display or aesthetic purposes, it is often necessary to perform tone mapping, which creates LDR depictions of HDR images at the cost of contrast information loss. The purpose of this work is two-fold: to analyze a displayed LDR image against its original HDR counterpart in terms of perceived contrast distortion, and to enhance the LDR depiction with perceptually driven colour adjustments to restore the original HDR contrast information. For analysis, we present a novel algorithm for the characterization of tone mapping distortion in terms of observed loss of global contrast, and loss of contour and texture details. We classify existing tone mapping operators accordingly. We measure both distortions with perceptual metrics that enable the automatic and meaningful enhancement of LDR depictions. For image enhancement, we identify artistic and photographic colour techniques from which we derive adjustments that create contrast with colour. The enhanced LDR image is an improved depiction of the original HDR image with restored contrast information.