Single image veiling glare removal. Issue 19 (11th November 2018) - Zhang, Zheng
ABSTRACT: Photographing against a bright light source is difficult since the direct light from the light source causes glare phenomenon in the lens, changing the colour balance and reducing the image contrast within the field of view. To address the effect, we introduce a glare formation model that accounts for the characters of the glare. Based on the model, we propose a single image processing method to remove the glare in the images by decomposing the image into the scene layer and the glare layer. We then adjust the brightness and the colour balance of the scene layer to eliminate the influences of the glare. In order to enhance the contrast decreased by the glare, we use a local standard deviation-based contrast enhancement algorithm to boost the details while avoiding excessive enhancement. Experimental results show that the method removes the majority of the glare and improves the local contrast effectively.