Cis dr image sensor with linear output compressed processing and af handling

A device for performing dynamic range image processing, the device comprising:

• an image sensor configured to capture a plurality of first images;
• and
• an image signal processor included in the image sensor, wherein the image signal processor is configured to:
• obtain the plurality of first images;
• merge the plurality of first images to obtain a second image, wherein a dynamic range of the second image is higher than a dynamic range of each of the plurality of first images;
• compress the second image using a compression function to obtain a compressed second image;
• perform image processing on the compressed second image to obtain a processed image;
• and
• decompress the processed image using a transposition of the compression function to obtain an output image,
• wherein the compression function is divided into a plurality of segments, and
• wherein a compression power for each segment of the plurality of segments is determined based on a noise profile of the image sensor.

A method for performing dynamic range image processing, the method comprising:

• obtaining a plurality of first images which were captured using an image sensor;
• performing exposure level alignment on two first images from among the plurality of first images to obtain a first aligned image and a second aligned image;
• splitting the first aligned image into a first phase image corresponding to a first phase and a second phase image corresponding to a second phase;
• splitting the second aligned image into a third phase image corresponding to the first phase and a fourth phase image corresponding to the second phase;
• merging the first phase image and the second phase image to obtain a first merged image corresponding to the first phase;
• merging the second phase image and the fourth phase image to obtain a second merged image corresponding to the second phase;
• and
• obtaining autofocus information based on the first merged image and the second merged image.