A Study of Unsharp Masking on HDR Visualization on low Dynamic Range Devices

Abstract

To visualize HDR contents on low dynamic range displays, a fast and efficient TMO is often preferred. One way to achieve this is to use a Global TMO. However, Global TMO often results in poor contrast tone-mapped images and often needs a postprocess that enhances the contrast, such as Unsharp Masking. This work illustrates that such Unsharp Masking can be directly integrated into several global TMOs, resulting in an alternative framework to apply the Unsharp Masking to the HDR visualization pipeline. The proposed framework is fast and delivers images with a proper contrast without the need for the additional image sharpening at the post process.