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Illumination Estimation, Illuminant Estimation

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Computer Vision

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Related Concepts

Color Constancy; Incident Light Measurement

Definition

The purpose of illumination estimation is to determine the direction, intensity, and/or color of the lighting in a scene. In contrast to direct measurement of lighting, the illumination information is inferred from cues within the scene, without use of a special probe or color calibration chart.

Background

The appearance of objects and scenes can vary considerably with respect to illumination conditions. In [1], differences in face appearance due to lighting were found to be greater than those due to identity. Since such appearance variations can affect the performance of certain computer vision algorithms, much research has focused on illumination estimation, so that lighting can be accounted for in image understanding.

To simplify inference, methods for illumination estimation typically assume that the illumination originates from distant light sources. With this assumption, the illumination can be considered to...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Microsoft Research Asia, Beijing Sigma Center, Beijing, China

    Stephen Lin

Authors
  1. Stephen Lin
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Katsushi Ikeuchi

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Lin, S. (2014). Illumination Estimation, Illuminant Estimation. In: Ikeuchi, K. (eds) Computer Vision. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-31439-6_516

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