HDR image from single LDR image after removing highlight

A low dynamic range (LDR) image that contains highlight does not provide proper information at the highlight area. Besides, all area of the image may not be exposed properly. Removing the highlight and then converting the image to the high dynamic range (HDR) image will increase the quality of the image from visual perception. In this paper, we propose a method for removing the highlight from an LDR image and convert the highlight free image to HDR image by using tone mapping operator (TMO). After detecting highlight area of an image, modified specular free (MSF) image is used to remove highlight part from the LDR image. Then, the highlight free LDR image is converted to HDR image by TMO. Finally, we have measured the quality of our output image to show that output image has better dynamic range than the input image.