A nonlinear filter system for beautifying facial images with contrast enhancement

A nonlinear image processing system for beautifying human facial images is proposed using contrast enhancement which effects highlighting and shading. Authors proposed before a nonlinear digital filter bank system, which removes undesirable skin components, such as wrinkles and spots, to make the skin look smoothed and beautified. Also, edge enhancement is utilized in this system to make the features of the face look clear-cut. This system is designed optimally on the basis of human subjective criteria and taste, using interactive evolutionary computing (IEC). Now, contrast enhancement is newly introduced to this system. By enhancing the contrast of the base component of the face image, which is extracted by the nonlinear filter bank, the face looks deeply chiseled from the effect of highlighting and shading. Especially, the dark shade around the outline of the face makes the face look slim and sharp. The degree of contrast enhancement is optimally set by IEC as well as other parameters in the nonlinear filter bank system. The proposed system is verified to be effective in experiments of processing an actual facial image.