Legible Tone Mapping : An evaluation of text processed by tone mapping operators

Abstract: Context. Tone mapping operators (TMO) are designed to reduce the dynamicrange of high dynamic range images so that they can be presented onstandard dynamic range display devices. Many operators focus on creatingperceptually similar images. Objectives. This thesis aims to investigate how dierent TMOs reproducephotographed text. The underlying reason being to test the contrast reproductionof each TMO. Methods. An experiment has been performed in order to investigate thelegibility of photographed and tone mapped text. A user study was conducted,in which 18 respondents partook, where respondents were to ratehow much of the text in each photograph that they found to be legible. Results. Due to low participation, the results of the experiment are mostlyinconclusive. However, some tendencies have been observed and analyzedand they fall in line with previous work within the area. Conclusions. The main conclusion that can be drawn from the results isthat the TMO presented by Kuang [11] is rated as better than the TMOsby Fattal [7] and Kim and Kautz [10].