A Minimalist Approach to HDR Image Compression with Applications to Low-Light Image Enhancement

In this paper, we deal with the problem of converting High Dynamic Range (HDR) images into high-quality Low Dynamic Range (LDR) images for faithful display on conventional limited dynamic range imaging devices. The proposed method consists of two γ-correction blocks with automatic parameter selections, an edge-aware image filtering scheme, and adaptive histogram equalization. Combined together in a right way, these ingredients lead to a simple and efficient HDR image compression scheme. The experimental results confirm that our approach allows us to achieve high-quality HDR compression results. They also show that the same method can be used for Low-Light Image Enhancement (LLIE) tasks. A key advantage of our approach lies in its simplicity: The proposed method can be implemented with just a few lines of MATLAB code.