Edge-detected detail enhancement through synthesis of multi-light images

Abstract

A collaborative image processing method is proposed to enhance the shape and details of a scene through synthesizing a set of multi-light images that capture a scene with fixed view-point but various lighting positions. A very challenging problem is to remove the artifacts due to shadow edges from the synthesized image. To address this problem, a simple Sobel filter based method is provided by utilizing the feature of multi-light images in which the shadow edges are usually not overlapped. A detail layer that contains the details of all images is firstly constructed by using a gradient domain method and a quadratic filter. Then a base layer is produced by using only one input image. The detail layer is finally added to the base layer to produce the desired detail enhanced image. Using this method, the details lost in the shadow of original input image can be reproduced by the details of other images and the sense of depth is preserved well in the synthesized image. Interactivities are also provided for users to adjust the appearance of the detail enhanced image according to their preferences.