Real-Time Tone Mapping for High-Resolution HDR Images

High dynamic range rendering attempts to take an HDR image and produce a more realistic representation on a limited range computer monitor. Although several tone mapping operators have been proposed in recent years, no evaluation has yet been undertaken to explore which operator is more suitable for hardware implementation. In this paper, we begin with our novel GPU implementations of two state-of-the-art operators in real time. Then several experimental results using eight GPU-based tone mapping operators are presented to evaluate which one is better with regard to running efficiency. Our GPU implementation of the Pattanaik operator can achieve real-time performance even on high-resolution HDR images. In addition, we believe that many real-time applications, including HDR video player and environment mapping with HDR textures in games, will benefit from our novel approach.