Emphasis on Material Appearance by A Combination of Dehazing and Local Visual Contrast

Abstract

Material appearance is a perceptual phenomenon that the brain interprets from the retinal image. Though, it is not easy to analyze what features of optical images are effectively related to the stimulus inside the visual cortex. For this reason, an intuitive or heuristic approach has been taken to simulate the material appearance. The simulation results are expected to drive innovation for not only traditional craft or plastic arts industry but also more realistic picture displays on 4K/8K HDTV and Virtual Reality or Computer Graphics. Optical surface property of material is modeled by BRDF (Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function). Specular S and Diffusion D components are responsible for the "glossiness" and "texture" and are used to emphasize the material appearance by simply adjusting the mixing ratio. This study introduces the following two key models to emphasize the material appearance of a given image without using such measuring means as BRDF and discusses how they work individually and cooperatively. (1) α-based Dehazing model to emphasize clarity, wetness, gloss. (2) β-based Contrast model to emphasize texture, roughness.