Visualization of high dynamic range images

Abstract

A novel paradigm for the visualization of high dynamic range images is presented in this paper. These images, real or synthetic, have luminance with typical ranges many orders of magnitude higher than that of standard output devices, thereby requiring some processing for visualization. In contrast with existent approaches, that compute a single image with reduced range, close in a given sense to the original data, we propose to look for a representative set of images. The goal is then to produce a minimal set of images capturing the information all over the high dynamic range data, while at the same time preserving a natural appearance for each one of the images in the set. A specific algorithm that achieves this goal is presented and tested on natural and synthetic data.