An Experimental Setup to Evaluate the Performance of Tone Mapping Algorithms

Abstract

Many algorithms have been proposed in the literature to solve the problem of mapping tones from high dynamic range sources to low dynamics displays, while preserving the information conveyed by the original scene. Methods and tools to evaluate the performance of tone mapping algorithms are needed. Some experiments have recently been presented involving human observers. In this paper, we propose method not relying on human scoring. Wellilluminated reference pictures of challenging scenes are captured and used as references. Low-quality shots of the same scenes are enhanced using some tone mapping algorithms and the outcome is compared to the reference images using a standard colour distance measure. The results clearly favour the more sophisticated local methods.