DENOISING NATURAL COLOR PHOTOS IN DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

Abstract. As digital photography rapidly replacing the traditional film photography as the photography of choice for all but a few devoted professionals, post image processing of natural color photos such as denoising becomes increasingly an integral part of digital photography. Although many denoising schemes have been designed, almost none specifically target natural color photos. Noise in natural color photos have special characteristics that are substantially different from those that have been added artificially. In this paper we propose the multiscale total variational method (MTV) for denoising. Standing alone the MTV method is effective in denoising monochromatic images. However, it demonstrates outstanding denoising capabilities for natural color images. Key to the success is the understanding of the characteristics of digital noise in natural color images as well as a non-traditional color space we have introduced specifically for the purpose. An automatic stopping criterion is applied to each channel to prevent over processing. 1. Noise In Natural Color Photos With the surging popularity of digital cameras, digital photography is rapidly replacing the traditional film photography as the photography of choice for virtually all but a fe