In this paper, we propose retinex-based perceptual contrast enhancement in images using luminance adaptation. We use the retinex theory to decompose an image into illumination and reflectance layers, and adopt luminance adaptation to handle the illumination layer which causes detail loss. First, we obtain the illumination layer using adaptive Gaussian filtering to remove halo artifacts. Then, we adaptively remove illumination of the illumination layer in the multi-scale retinex (MSR) process based on luminance adaptation to preserve details. Finally, we perform contrast enhancement on the MSR result. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method successfully enhances contrast in images while keeping textures in highlight regions.
Index Terms— Contrast enhancement, human visual perception, halo artifact, image enhancement, luminance adaptation, multi-scale retinex