Very Simple Tone Curves

Bennett, James and Finlayson, Graham D. (2025) Very Simple Tone Curves. In: 33rd Color and Imaging Conference, 2025-10-27 - 2025-10-31. (In Press)

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Abstract

Tone mapping algorithms are used to compress dynamic range, make image details more conspicuous and generally enhance the image for preference. Global tone mapping manipulates the brightnesses of pixels by applying a single function - or tone curve - to every pixel in the image. Tone curve generation algorithms often constrain the shape of their tone curves and it has been argued that tone curves should be simple, meaning they have one or zero inflexion points. In this work, we investigate whether tone curves should be simplified even further. We present our method which finds the zero inflexion tone curve - which we call a Very Simple (VS) curve - that best approximates a potentially complex tone curve. For the MIT-Adobe FiveK dataset, comprising 25,000 expert tone adjustments, we calculate the best VS approximations and find these curves produce visually similar images compared with more complex counterparts.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Computing Sciences
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Colour and Imaging Lab
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	03 Oct 2025 16:30
Last Modified:	03 Oct 2025 16:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/100621
DOI:

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