High Dynamic Range Imaging and LDR Expansion for Generating HDR Content

In the last few years researches in the field of High Dynamic Range (HDR) Imaging have focused on providing tools for expanding LDR content for the generation of HDR images due to the growing popularity of HDR in applications, such as photography and rendering via Image-Based Lighting, and the imminent arrival of HDR displays to the consumer market. LDR content expansion is required due to the lack of fast and reliable consumer level HDR capture for still images and videos. Furthermore, LDR content expansion, will allow the re-use of legacy LDR stills, videos and LDR applications created, over the last century and more, to be widely available. The use of certain LDR expansion methods, those that are based on the inversion of tone mapping operators, has made it possible to create novel compression algorithms that tackle the problem of the size of HDR content storage, which remains one of the major obstacles to be overcome for the adoption of HDR. These methods are used in conjunction with traditional LDR compression methods and can evolve accordingly. The goal of this report is to provide a comprehensive overview on HDR Imaging, and an in depth review on these emerging topics. Moreover, we are proposing how to classify and to validate them. We will discuss limitations of these methods, and identify remaining challenges for the future