Two-scale Tone Management for Photographic Look


Soonmin Bae   Sylvain Paris   Frédo Durand

MIT CSAIL

ACM Transactions on Graphics, Volume 25, Issue 3 (Proc. of SIGGRAPH 2006)



Abstract

We introduce a new approach to tone management for photographs. Whereas traditional tone-mapping operators target a neutral and faithful rendition of the input image, we explore pictorial looks by controlling visual qualities such as the tonal balance and the amount of detail. Our method is based on a two-scale non-linear decomposition of an image. We modify the different layers based on their histograms and introduce a technique that controls the spatial variation of detail. We introduce a Poisson correction that prevents potential gradient reversal and preserves detail. In addition to directly controlling the parameters, the user can transfer the look of a model photograph to the picture being edited.





Acknowledgement

We thank the reviewers of the MIT Computer Graphics Group and the SIGGRAPH reviewers for insightful feedback. We are especially grateful to Eugene Hsu and Eric Chan for their expert comments on our prints. This work was supported by a National Science Foundation CAREER award 0447561 "Transient Signal Processing for Realistic Imagery," an NSF Grant No. 0429739 "Parametric Analysis and Transfer of Pictorial Style," and a grant from Royal Dutch/Shell Group. Frédo Durand acknowledges a Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship. Sylvain Paris was partially supported by a Lavoisier Fellowship from the French "Ministère des Affaires Étrangères." Soonmin Bae is financially supported by the Samsung Lee Kun Hee Scholarship Foundation.