Hardware-efficient debanding and visual enhancement filter for inverse tone mapped high dynamic range images and videos

If a low dynamic range (LDR) image or video is inverse tone mapped to a higher dynamic range, there can be banding artifacts in the output high dynamic range (HDR) image or video. We design a selective sparse filter to remove the banding artifacts and at the same time preserve edges and details. The filter is able to reduce other artifacts, such as blocky artifacts which are due to the compression of the LDR image/video. The filter is computationally efficient.