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Specular highlights detection and reduction with multi-flash photography

Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society volume 12, pages 35–42 (2006)Cite this article

Abstract

We present a novel method to reduce the effect of specularities in digital images. Our approach relies on a simple modification of the capture setup: a multi-flash camera is used to take multiple pictures of the scene, each one with a differently positioned light source. We then formulate the problem of specular highlights reduction as solving a Poisson equation on a gradient field obtained from the input images. The obtained specular reduced image is further refined in a matting process with the maximum composite of the input images. Experimental results are demonstrated on real and synthetic images. The entire setup can be conceivably packaged into a self-contained device, no larger than existing digital cameras.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Santa Barbara, USA

    Rogerio Feris & Matthew Turk

  2. Mitsubish Electric Research Labs, USA

    Ramesh Raskar

  3. Epson Palo Alto Research Labs, USA

    Kar-Han Tan

Authors
  1. Rogerio Feris
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  2. Ramesh Raskar
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  3. Kar-Han Tan
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  4. Matthew Turk
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rogerio Feris.

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Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Feris, R., Raskar, R., Tan, KH. et al. Specular highlights detection and reduction with multi-flash photography. J Braz Comp Soc 12, 35–42 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03192386

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03192386

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