Testing tone mapping operators with human-perceived reality

Abstract. A number of successful tone mapping operators for contrast compression have been proposed due to the need to visualize high dynamic range (HDR) images on low dynamic range (LDR) devices. They were inspired by fields as diverse as image processing, photographic practice, and modeling of the human visual systems (HVS). The variety of approaches calls for a systematic perceptual evaluation of their performance. We conduct a psychophysical experiment based on a direct comparison between the appearance of real-world scenes and HDR images of these scenes displayed on an LDR monitor. In our experiment, HDR images are tone mapped by seven existing tone mapping operators. The primary interest of this psychophysical experiment is to assess the differences in how tone mapped images are perceived by human observers and to find out which attributes of image appearance account for these differences when tone mapped images are compared directly with their corresponding real-world scenes r...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2007
• Where: JEI
• Authors: Akiko Yoshida, Volker Blanz, Karol Myszkowski, Hans-Peter Seidel
• Keywords: Corresponding Real-world Scene, Images, JEI 2007, Real-world Scene