2019 IEEE 2nd International Conference on Information Systems and Computer Aided Education (ICISCAE)

A New Tone Mapping Operator Based on Two-

layer Model
2019 2nd International Conference on Information Systems and Computer Aided Education (ICISCAE) 978-1-7281-3066-8/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE 10.1109/ICISCAE48440.2019.221593

Pei Wu1, a, Congliang Hu1, Nanhang Luo1, Li Tao1, Wei Zheng1,2

1
Second Institute for Wuhan Ship Development & Design, Wuhan, China
2
National Key LAB of Science and Technology on Steam Power System for NS
a
wupei210@163.com

Abstract—Tone mapping is a process of compressing high
dynamic range image data into low dynamic range data
according to specific rules, so that the image can be displayed
on ordinary display devices. The specific rules are called tone
mapping operators. Nowadays, the mainstream tone mapping
operator can be divided into two kinds, the global operators
and the local operators. This paper processes a new tone
mapping operator based on two-layer model. Our operator
combines the characteristics of global operators and local
operators, and it can effectively compress the high dynamic
range images with an excellent performance.
Keywords—high dynamic range image, tone mapping
operator, image processing
I. INTRODUCTION
High Dynamic Range (HDR) Imaging technology has
recently been diffusing in many fields: aerospace, medical
imaging, unmanned aerial vehicle, and more [1] [2] [3]. But
most contemporary display devices submarine only low
dynamic range (LDR) images. So there is a need to convert
HDR images to LDR images before displaying them on
ordinary display devices.
Tone mapping provides an effective solution to solve the
problem, which compress HDR image data down to a lower
dynamic range. The methods that perform tone mapping are
called tone mapping operators (TMOs).
Over the years, various TMOs have been proposed,
which can be distinguished into two categories: global tone
mapping operators and local tone mapping operators. Global
operators process all the pixels due to the same curve. The
curve can be specified before image processing or set
according to the specific content of the HDR image. This
kind of operator is unified, so the pixels which have the same
gray value in the original HDR image will have the same
gray value after compressed. Common global operators are
linear transformation operator [4], logarithmic
transformation operator [5], histogram-based compression
transformation operator [6], S-function transformation
operator [7] and so on. Local operator process the pixels with
respect to the influence of their closer neighbor. This kind of
operator considers the effect of pixel position during
processing, so that pixels with the same gray value may have
different values after compressed. Photographic tone [8]
bilateral filter method [9] and Retinex theory [10] are
commonly used methods of local operators.
layer. The luminance layer mainly contains the luminance
information of each point in the scene, while the contrast
layer mainly contains the contrast information of the local
area in the scene. In the remaining sections, the detail of the
proposed operator is described in Section II. The
experimental results are shown in Section III and the
conclusion will be drawn in Section IV.
II. ALGORITHM
We make I(x,y) denote the HDR image, L(x,y) denote
luminance the layer and C(x,y) denote the contrast layer.
A. Luminance Layer Acquisition
Firstly, S-function transformation operator is used to
compress the HDR image, so as to obtain the luminance
information of the image.
S-transform operator is based on an S-function curve
which is nonlinear and range from 0 to 1. Its mathematical
model can be expressed by Equation (1).
s  1.0 / (1.0  e  x ) (1)
In this algorithm, the average luminance value of pixels
is taken as the eigenvalue. It can be computed as Equation
(2).
1
Lavg  exp(
N
 log(  Lw (x ,y )))
(2)
Lw(x,y) is the original gray value of pixel (x,y) in the
HDR image. N is the total number of pixels. In order to
prevent possible negative infinite results in logarithmic
computation, a small positive number  is added. In this
paper,  is set to 0.001.
We map the luminance value according to the method
shown in Equation (1), the luminance layer L(x,y) can be
computed as Equation (3).
1 log5(Lwa(x ,y )  1.0)
L(x ,y )  
log10(Lwa _ max  1.0) 1.0  e  log5(Lwa (x ,y ))
(3)

This paper presents a new TMO which combines the

global compression method with local compression. We
divide the HDR image into luminance layer and contrast

978-1-7281-3066-8/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE 86 September 28-30•2019 Dalian, China

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 Where, Lwa is computed as Equation (4) and Lwa_max is
computed as Equation (5). Lwmax is the maximum gray value
of the HDR image.
Lwa(x ,y )  Lw (x ,y ) / Lavg
Lwa _ max  Lw max / Lavg
B. Contrast Layer Acquisition
The LDR image computed by S-function transformation
operator can present all the information in the original scene,
but the contrast of the obtained image is not rich and the
image has a fuzzy feeling. Therefore we take the effect of
local contrast into account, and calculate the contrast layer
information, so as to optimize the local details of the LDR
image.
The proposed method can be formulated as Equation (6).
Lw  x ,y  / Lavg
C  x ,y  
  V  x ,y   Lw  x ,y  / Lavg
Where, V(x,y) represents the contrast correction
parameter and represents the weight of the parameter.
V(x,y) is computed as Equation (7).
 1 L  x ,y  
V  x ,y   exp    w 
 1.44
 L  x , y  
 (7)
We assume the radius of pixel’s adjacent region is r, and
the average gray value for the region is donated as L(x,y)
which can be computed as Equation (8).
1 r r the book. The overall effect of the image can satisfy the
L(x ,y ) 
(1  2r )2
  Lw(x  r ,y  r )
 
i r j r
The adjacent region of pixel (x,y) is adaptive. Its size will
affects the calculation of average value and then affect the
calculation of contrast layer. The contrast will be sensitive to
random noise if the size is too small, while the result will be
meaningless if the size is too large.
By observing the definition of parameter V , it can be
seen that its value is determined by the ratio of pixel’s gray
value and the gray value of pixel’s adjacent region. We
donate the ratio as . When pixel’s gray value is equal to the
gray value of its adjacent region, that is, the value of  is 1，
V will become 0.5. With the increase of , V will gradually
approach to 0, on the contrary, V will gradually approach to 1
with the decrease of .
According to Equation (6) and (7), after processing, the
final pixel gray value will be further increased if it has a low
value. Through this method, the gray value can be enhanced
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if a pixel’s original value is low. It can significantly
improves the visibility of the image details in darker regions.
C. Operator Fusion
The final fusion operator can be obtained by combining
operator and, it can be computed as Equation (9).
(4)
Ld (x ,y )  L(x ,y )  C(x ,y ) (9)
(5)
According to the definition of L, C and Ld, the value of Ld
ranges from 0 to 1. In order to match the display width of
LDR devices, we need to map the gray value. The final
display image D is computed as Equation (10).
Ld (x ,y )  Ld (x ,y )  (2n  1)
(10)
Where, n is the width of the display devices.
III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
In the experiment, we select a LED light source as the
bright target and a book in the dark field as the dark target.
By using the high dynamic range imaging system based on
(6)
DMD and applying high dynamic scene recovery algorithm,
the data of the HDR scene is acquired [11].
We choose three popular tone mapping operator (the
logarithmic operator, S-function operator and the operator
proposed by Reinhard) to compare with the operator we
proposed. The results are shown in Fig 1. In this experiment,
ris set to 2 and is set to 1.1.
According to the results, we can see that the LDR images
processed by global methods are fuzzy and their contrast are
not enough. The local method proposed by Reinhard can
give the processed image a good contrast, but the image is
saturated at the details of the filament. Our proposed method
efficiently enhances the brightness and contrast of the scene.
From the LDR image processed by our method, we can see
the details of the LED while clearly identifying the words on
intuitive feeling of the human eye.
(8)
Yeganeh [12] has created an image database for
evaluation purpose, which can provide fair conditions for
comparing images generated by different tone mapping
algorithms. We choose Drago’s TMO, logarithmic TMO,
Ward’s global TMO and Reinhard’s TMO to compare with
our proposed method. We apply the above operators to
compress Bottles and Oxford Church. The compressed
results are shown in Fig 2 and. Fig 3. It can be seen that the
global TMOs can effectively compress the region with high
luminance value, so that its details can be clearly displayed.
But it cannot handle the details of the dark regions well. The
local TMOs improve the shortcomings of global TMOs, but
there is slight saturation in the bright regions and the
processed images are blurred. Our proposed method absorbs
the advantages of the above two kind of operators. The
compressed image is rich in color and the details of bright
and dark regions can be displayed perfectly.
Yeganeh has also proposed an objective quality
calculation method, called Tone Mapped image Quality
87
Index. It can quantitatively analyze the performance of IV. CONCLUSION
different algorithms. Table I shows the results. It can be seen A new tone mapping operator based on two-layer model
that our method has the highest mean value. has been proposed. The operator is divided into luminance
layer operator and contrast layer operator. The luminance
TABLE I. TABLE STYLES layer operator compress the image in global and the contrast
TMO Mean TMQI
layer operator calculates the local contrast. By fusing the
Logarithmic TMO 0.6715 information of the two operators, we get our new operator.
Ward’s global TMO 0.6822 Experiments shows that our operator performs excellent. It
Reinhard’s TMO 0.8442 can boost the brightness and contrast in dark regions and
Drago’s TMO 0.8612 suppress the saturation in bright regions at the same time.
Our proposed TMO 0.8869

(a) logarithmic operator (b) S-function operator

(c) operator proposed by Drago (d) the operator we proposed

Fig. 1. The processed results

(a) Logarithmic TMO (b) Ward’s global TMO (c) Reinhard’s TMO

(d) Drago’s TMO (e) our proposed TMO

Fig. 2. The compressed results of Bottles

88

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 (a) Logarithmic TMO (b) Ward’s global TMO (c) Reinhard’s TMO

(d) Drago’s TMO (e) our proposed TMO

Fig. 3. The compressed results of Oxford Church

[6] Larson G W, Rushmeier H, Piatko C. A visibility matching tone

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research is supported by the National Key R&D
Program of China, marine nuclear power platform
technology & equipment development and demonstration
application project (2017YFC0307800).
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