Tone mapping

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9984445-B2
Application number	US-201414513722-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 14, 2014
Priority date	Oct 17, 2013
Publication date	May 29, 2018
Grant date	May 29, 2018

Abstract

A tone mapping unit applies tone mapping to a block of pixel values. In each of a plurality of iterations, one or more lines of pixel values are processed based on information relating to pixel values of at least one previous line of the block which have been processed in at least one previous iteration. The information is used to determine one or more tone mapping relationships which is/are used to map the pixel values of the current line to tone-mapped pixel values. Furthermore, the information is updated based on the pixel values of the current line and stored for use in processing pixel values of a subsequent line of pixel values of the block in a subsequent iteration.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A method of applying tone mapping to a block of a plurality of lines of pixel values, the method comprising, in each of a plurality of iterations:
receiving a current line of pixel values of the block;
retrieving stored information relating to pixel values of at least one previous line of the block which have been processed in at least one previous iteration;
using the retrieved information to: (i) determine updated information which is updated in dependence on the pixel values of the current line, and (ii) determine one or more tone mapping relationships for use in mapping the pixel values of the current line to tone-mapped pixel values;
mapping the pixel values of the current line to tone-mapped pixel values using the determined one or more tone mapping relationships; and
storing the updated information for use in processing pixel values of a subsequent line of pixel values of the block in a subsequent iteration.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein determining updated information comprises performing a weighted combination of: (i) the information relating to pixel values of the at least one previous line, and (ii) information relating to the pixel values of the current line.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the information comprises one or more histograms, each histogram representing a distribution of pixel values.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the information comprises one or more tone mapping relationships for mapping pixel values to tone-mapped pixel values.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the block further comprises a plurality of columns of pixel values, and wherein the information comprises a plurality of pieces of information relating to pixel values of the respective plurality of columns from said at least one previous line of the block.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein a plurality of tone mapping relationships are determined for the respective plurality of columns, and wherein said mapping the pixel values of the current line to tone-mapped pixel values comprises:
for each of the pixel values of the current line, determining a plurality of candidate tone-mapped pixel values using a respective plurality of the tone mapping relationships and interpolating the candidate tone-mapped pixel values.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the block of pixel values is a frame of a sequence of frames, and wherein the method further comprises:
determining a global tone mapping relationship using information relating to pixel values of a previous frame in the sequence of frames; and
using the global tone mapping relationship to determine globally tone-mapped pixel values for the pixel values of the current line,
wherein said mapping the pixel values of the current line to tone-mapped pixel values comprises performing a weighted combination of: (i) tone-mapped pixel values determined based on said determined one or more tone mapping relationships, and (ii) the globally tone-mapped pixel values.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein said determining updated information comprises determining one or more histograms of the distribution of pixel values in the current line, wherein each pixel value of the current line contributes to a plurality of bins of a histogram such that the histograms represent smoothed distributions of pixel values.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein said determining updated information further comprises flattening at least one of the one or more histograms.

10. The method of claim 8 wherein the information comprises one or more tone mapping relationships for mapping pixel values to tone-mapped pixel values, and wherein said determining updated information further comprises determining one or more tone mapping relationships by integrating the respective one or more histograms.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein said determining updated information comprises performing a weighted combination of: (i) the one or more tone mapping relationships determined for the current line, and (ii) the respective one or more tone mapping relationships determined from pixel values of the at least one previous line.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein either: (i) said updated information is used to determine the one or more tone mapping relationships, or (ii) said retrieved information, instead of said updated information, is used to determine the one or more tone mapping relationships.

13. The method of claim 1 wherein in each of the plurality of iterations, a subset of two or more of the lines of pixel values of the block are received and processed in parallel to thereby map the received pixel values of the subset of lines to tone-mapped pixel values,
and wherein said determining updated information comprises updating the retrieved information in dependence on the received pixel values from the subset of lines for use in processing pixel values of a subsequent subset of one or more lines of pixel values of the block in a subsequent iteration.

14. The method of claim 1 wherein the pixel values are luminance values.

15. The method of claim 1 wherein the method is implemented in a camera processing pipeline.

16. A tone mapping unit configured to apply tone mapping to a block of a plurality of lines of pixel values, the tone mapping unit comprising a processing module configured to, in each of a plurality of iterations:
receive a current line of pixel values of the block;
retrieve stored information relating to pixel values of at least one previous line of the block which have been processed in at least one previous iteration;
use the retrieved information to: (i) determine updated information which is updated in dependence on the pixel values of the current line, and (ii) determine one or more tone mapping relationships for use in mapping the pixel values of the current line to tone-mapped pixel values;
map the pixel values of the current line to tone-mapped pixel values using the determined one or more tone mapping relationships; and
cause the updated information to be stored for use in processing pixel values of a subsequent line of pixel values of the block in a subsequent iteration.

17. The tone mapping unit of claim 16 wherein the block of pixel values is a frame of a sequence of frames, and wherein the tone mapping unit further comprises:
a global mapping determination module configured to determine a global tone mapping relationship using information relating to pixel values of a previous frame in the sequence of frames;
wherein the processing module comprises a global mapping module configured to use the global tone mapping relationship to determine globally tone-mapped pixel values for the pixel values of the current line, and
wherein the processing module is configured to map the pixel values of the current line to tone-mapped pixel values by performing a weighted combination of: (i) tone-mapped pixel values determined based on the determined one or more tone mapping relationships, and (ii) globally tone-mapped pixel values determined by the global mapping module.

18. The tone mapping unit of claim 16 wherein the processing module is configured to receive, in each of the plurality of iterations, a subset of two or more of the lines of pixel values of the block and to process the received subset of two or more of the lines of pixel values in parallel to thereby map the received pixel values of the subset of lines to tone-mapped pixel values,
and wherein the processing module is configured to update the information in dependence on the received pixel values from the subset of lines for use in processing pixe

Assignees

• Imagination Tech Ltd

Inventors

• Valdes Lopez Victor
• Bishop Michael

Classifications

• H04N23/71

  Circuitry for evaluating the brightness variation · CPC title

• H04N23/76

  by influencing the image signals · CPC title

• H04N1/6005

  with luminance or chrominance signals, e.g. LC1C2, HSL or YUV · CPC title

• H04N1/4074

  using histograms · CPC title

• H04N1/407

  Control or modification of tonal gradation or of extreme levels, e.g. background level · CPC title