Cross Dissolve Without Cross Fade: Preserving Contrast, Color and Salience in Image Compositing

Linear interpolation is the standard image blending method used in image compositing. By averaging in the dynamic range, it reduces contrast and visibly degrades the quality of composite imagery. We demonstrate how to correct linear interpolation to resolve this longstanding problem. To provide visually meaningful, high level control over the compositing process, we introduce three novel image blending operators that are designed to preserve key visual characteristics of their inputs. Our contrast preserving method applies a linear color mapping to recover the contrast lost due to linear interpolation. Our salience preserving method retains the most informative regions of the input images by balancing their relative opacity with their relative saliency. Our color preserving method extends homomorphic image processing by establishing an isomorphism between the image colors and the real numbers, allowing any mathematical operation defined on real numbers to be applied to colors without losing its algebraic properties or mapping colors out of gamut. These approaches to image blending have artistic uses in image editing and video production as well as technical applications such as image morphing and mipmapping.

[1]  Takashi Totsuka,et al.  Image blending by feature overwrite , 1998, Proceedings 1998 International Conference on Image Processing. ICIP98 (Cat. No.98CB36269).

[2]  J. Michel,et al.  Logarithmic image processing: additive contrast, multiplicative contrast, and associated metrics , 2001 .

[3]  Nikos Paragios,et al.  Handbook of Mathematical Models in Computer Vision , 2005 .

[4]  Lynn Pocock,et al.  The computer animator's technical handbook , 2002 .

[5]  O. Faugeras.  Digital color image processing within the framework of a human visual model , 1979 .

[6]  Neil A. Dodgson,et al.  Color histogram specification by histogram warping , 2005, IS&T/SPIE Electronic Imaging.

[7]  Tom Duff,et al.  Compositing digital images , 1984, SIGGRAPH.

[8]  Andrew Blake,et al.  Digital tapestry [automatic image synthesis] , 2005, 2005 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR'05).

[9]  Ron Brinkmann,et al.  The Art and Science of Digital Compositing , 1999 .

[10]  Edward H. Adelson,et al.  A multiresolution spline with application to image mosaics , 1983, TOGS.

[11]  Ross T. Whitaker.  A level-set approach to image blending , 2000, IEEE Trans. Image Process..

[12]  M. J. Frank.  On the simultaneous associativity ofF(x,y) andx +y -F(x,y) , 1979 .

[13]  Shmuel Peleg,et al.  PICTURES AS ELEMENTS IN VECTOR SPACE. , 1983, CVPR 1983.

[14]  M. J. Frank.  On the simultaneous associativity ofF(x, y) andx+y−F(x, y) , 1978 .

[15]  Patrick Pérez,et al.  Poisson image editing , 2003, ACM Trans. Graph..

[16]  M. J. Frank.  On the simultaneous associativity of F(x, y) and x+y-F(x, y). (Short Communication). , 1978 .

[17]  M. Jourlin,et al.  Logarithmic image processing: The mathematical and physical framework for the representation and processing of transmitted images , 2001 .

[18]  Steven M. Seitz,et al.  View morphing , 1996, SIGGRAPH.

[19]  Alvy Ray Smith.  Alpha and the History of Digital Compositing , 1995 .

[20]  Walter Bender,et al.  Salient Stills: Process and Practice , 1996, IBM Syst. J..

[21]  Irfan A. Essa,et al.  Graphcut textures: image and video synthesis using graph cuts , 2003, ACM Trans. Graph..

[22]  David Salesin,et al.  Computer-generated watercolor , 1997, SIGGRAPH.

[23]  Richard Szeliski,et al.  Image Alignment and Stitching , 2006, Handbook of Mathematical Models in Computer Vision.

[24]  A. Oppenheim,et al.  Nonlinear filtering of multiplied and convolved signals , 1968 .

[25]  Lynn Pocock,et al.  The Computer Animator's Technical Handbook (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics) , 2001 .

[26]  Shmuel Peleg,et al.  Seamless image stitching by minimizing false edges , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing.

[27]  George Wolberg,et al.  Image morphing: a survey , 1998, The Visual Computer.

[28]  David Salesin,et al.  Interactive digital photomontage , 2004, ACM Trans. Graph..

[29]  Erik Reinhard,et al.  Color Transfer between Images , 2001, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.