Signal Processing Leads a Photographic and Imaging Revolution [Special Reports]

Photography and imaging have been radically transformed over the past couple of decades in ways that 19th-century pioneers such as Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre (Figure 1) and Henry Fox Talbot could have scarcely imagined. Traditional photography and imaging, rooted in chemical processes, have now largely given way to digital methodologies and technologies. The result has been faster, less expensive, and more convenient ways of acquiring and presenting images, and in many cases the creation of clearer, more detailed, and less distorted pictures on many different types of media.Signal processing plays an important role in virtually all types of digital photography and imaging. In consumer, professional, industrial, and scientific still cameras, sophisticated integrated algorithms help determine how images are collected, interpreted, and stored. Algorithms, for example, ensure that captured raw sensor data are efficiently translated into color-corrected image data that can then be stored either in raw pixels or as compressed images. Image processing algorithms are also involved in image capture and compression, focus and exposure control, managing white balance, demosaicing, image storage, preview display rendering and scaling, and various postprocessing tasks.