Real-time tone mapping – An evaluation of color-accurate methods for luminance compression

Sebastian Dille, Arnulph Fuhrmann, Gregor Fischer
In: Franke, K.-H.; Nestler, R. (Hrsg.), Tagungsband des 22. Workshop Farbbildverarbeitung 2016 in Ilmenau

Abstract

Recent advances in real-time rendering enable virtual production pipelines in a broad range of industries. These pipelines are based on a fast, latency-free handling in addition to the accurate appearance of results. This requires the use of high dynamic range rendering for photo-realistic results and a tone mapping operator for a matched display.

However, color-accurate tone mapping of real-time rendering has not yet been the focus of most publications. Tone mapping furthermore tends to cause image appearance effects, which causes changes in the perception of colors and therefore a discrepancy between displayed and real-world products.

To compensate for these changes in appearance, seven tone mapping operators with different approaches of color correction are evaluated in this paper. They are implemented as fragment shaders to facilitate realtime processing. In addition, their performance and subjective accuracy is measured.

As a result, the filmic tone mapping operator as a global sigmoid-based operator performs best and can be recommended for the usage in colorcritical real-time applications.

Paper

Preprint: PDF. Tagungsband (ISBN: 978-3-00-053918-3)