Regularized tone mapping using edge preserving filters

Tone mapping is the process of compressing the dynamic range of a scene to make it compatible with displays with limited dynamic range. In this paper, we present a new approach for tone mapping of high dynamic range (HDR) images using edge-preserving filter. We pose it as a variational problem and derive an optimal solution. We compare the results with some of the existing tone mapping algorithms and show that our algorithm compresses the high dynamic range better while preserving the details and avoiding common artefacts. We use an online dynamic range independent metric for analysing the results by the proposed and existing operators and to detect the deviation from the reference HDR image.