Dynamic Range Extension and Matching from a Single LDR Image

High dynamic range imaging is a technique to present a high quality image close to the real scene. The purpose of dynamic range extension is to accurately show a wide range of intensity level found in real scenes ranging from sunlight to shadow. In this paper, we propose a method to extend the single low dynamic range to high dynamic range image based on Gaussian distribution. Additionally, we present a solution for matching between histogram of high dynamic range image and an original input image to get a high dynamic range image. To evaluate our results, we use a dynamic range independent image quality assessment. It distinguishes between the change of contrast, which is an important role in the evaluation of novel lighting, rendering, and imaging algorithms. The results demonstrate that the image quality is ameliorated, the illumination in the image is balanced, and the extended HDRI represent accurately the dynamic range of a large difference between light and dark areas.