Illumination-based image synthesis: creating novel images of human faces under differing pose and lighting

We present an illumination-based method for synthesizing images of an object under novel viewing conditions. Our method requires as few as three images of the object taken under variable illumination, but from a fixed viewpoint. Unlike multi-view based image synthesis, our method does not require the determination of point or line correspondences. Furthermore, our method is able to synthesize not simply novel viewpoints, but novel illumination conditions as well. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by generating synthetic images of human faces.