Method for automatic enhancement of images containing snow
AssigneeXerox Corporation
InventorLuca Marchesotti
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A content-based image processing method and system are provided for images identified as having snow content. Images having dark snow content are identified and processed with a first enhancement chain tailored to enhancing images which would be generally perceived as having dark snow while images having blue snow content are identified and processed with a second enhancement chain tailored to enhancing images which would be generally perceived as having blue snow.
Claims22
A content-based image processing method comprising:
- automatically identifying whether an original image includes snow content;
- and
- for an image which is identified as including snow content:
- automatically assigning a degradation class for the image, selected from a plurality of degradation classes, the classes comprising a first class for dark snow images and a second class for blue snow images,
- processing the image to generate an enhanced image, comprising, where the image is assigned to the first class, applying a first enhancement chain, and where the image is assigned to the second class, applying a second enhancement chain, and
- outputting the enhanced image.
A computer program product including a non-transitory computer-readable medium which encodes instructions which, when executed by a computer, perform a method comprising:
- automatically identifying whether an original image includes snow content;
- and for an image which is identified as including snow content:
- automatically assigning a degradation class for the image, selected from a plurality of degradation classes, the classes comprising a first class for dark snow images and a second class for blue snow images,
- processing the image to generate an enhanced image, comprising, where the image is assigned to the first class, applying a first enhancement chain, and where the image is assigned to the second class, applying a second enhancement chain, and
- outputting the enhanced image.
A content-based image processing system comprising:
- a snow identifier which is configured for automatically identifying whether an original image includes snow content;
- a snow degradation classifier which, for an image which is identified by the snow identifier as including snow content, automatically assigns a degradation class for the image, selected from a plurality of degradation classes, the classes comprising a first class for dark snow images and a second class for blue snow images;
- the system applying a first enhancement chain for images assigned to the first degradation class and a second enhancement chain for images assigned to the second degradation class.
A method for processing a set of images comprising:
- inputting a set of original images;
- automatically identifying images having dark snow content;
- automatically identifying images having blue snow content;
- for the images identified as having dark snow, automatically applying an enhancement chain which includes a non-linear luminance transformation and a saturation enhancement operation;
- for the images identified as having blue snow, automatically applying an enhancement chain which includes a dynamic range mapping and a color balance correction to the image which decreases an amount of the blue component of the image non-uniformly as a function of gray level;
- and
- outputting the enhanced images.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.