Evaluation of tone mapping operators using a High Dynamic Range display

Abstract

Tone mapping operators are designed to reproduce visibility and the overall impression of brightness, contrast and color of the real world onto limited dynamic range displays and printers. Although many tone mapping operators have been published in recent years, no thorough psychophysical experiments have yet been undertaken to compare such operators against the real scenes they are purporting to depict. In this paper, we present the results of a series of psychophysical experiments to validate six frequently used tone mapping operators against linearly mapped High Dynamic Range (HDR) scenes displayed on a novel HDR device. Individual operators address the tone mapping issue using a variety of approaches and the goals of these techniques are often quite different from one another. Therefore, the purpose of this investigation was not simply to determine which is the "best" algorithm, but more generally to propose an experimental methodology to validate such operators and to determine the participants' impressions of the images produced compared to what is visible on a high contrast ratio display.

Optimized tone mapping with LDR image quality constraint for backward-compatible high dynamic range image and video coding

“…PTR [13] is a popular TMO with its better performance than others in terms of contrast loss [14] and psycho-visual experiments [15]. We use the HDR image database in [16]-[17] in our tests.…”

Automated parameter tuning for tone mapping using visual saliency

“…However, after parameter tuning, those two operators can exhibit performance similar to Schlick's operator in terms of SSIM index, and even better results in terms of PSNR. Some current assessments of tone mapping operators only consider default parameter settings [24,25,46], and different results might be arrived at by considering the potential of operators for parameter tuning. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 The third experiment is a comparison between parameter tuning based on saliency distortion and parameter tuning based on TMQI.…”

Real-Time Tone Mapping for High-Resolution HDR Images

“…Ledda et al [23] presented results of a psychophysical investigation to validate that an HDR display is capable of contrast ratios similar to what is presented in the physical world. Ledda et al [24] validated six TMOs against linearly mapped HDR scenes on a HDR display by presenting results of a series of psychophysical experiments.Čadík et al [4] presented the evaluation of 14 TMOs with regard to image quality attributes. Many other experiments have been presented to evaluate HDR image rendering algorithms [17,20,19,21].…”