Byoung-Ju YUN¹, Jinhyung PARK², Seunghae KIM², Hyun-Deok KIM¹, and Ho-Hyoung CHOI^3*

¹School of Electronics Engineering, IT College, Kyungpook National University, Deagu 702-701, Republic of Korea
²Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information, Daejeon 305-806, Republic of Korea
³Department of Mobile Communication Engineering, Kyungpook National University, Deagu 702-701, Republic of Korea

(Received June 19, 2012; Accepted November 9, 2012)

In the image capturing process using a camera, poor illumination has an influence on the image quality, especially in regards to the contrast and details in the dark regions. Generally, high dynamic range (HDR) imaging techniques are used to match the quality between the real scene and the displayed image. However, in images using the multi-exposure technique or regular photography, the images are limited by the veiling glare, which is scene-, exposure-, lens-, aperture-, and camera-dependent. This study mainly addressed images using the multi-exposure technique and developed a color correction scheme that uses a chromatic adaptation method. In the tone mapping using a Gaussian pyramid, the adaptation level is obtained based on a linear Gaussian filter. The resulting image is then processed through the developed tone-mapping function. This allows the chromatic adaptation method to address the mismatches between the real world and the displayed image. The experiment results show that the proposed method yields a better color correction performance compared to conventional methods.

Key words: HDR image, color correction, tone mapping using Gaussian pyramid, linear Gaussian filter, chromatic adaptation

^*E-mail address: chhman2000@msn.com