Image declipping with deep networks

Abstract

We present a deep network to recover pixel values lost to clipping. The clipped area of the image is typically a uniform area of minimum or maximum brightness, losing image detail and color fidelity. The degree to which the clipping is visually noticeable depends on the amount by which values were clipped, and the extent of the clipped area. Clipping may occur in any (or all) of the pixel's color channels. Although clipped pixels are common and occur to some degree in almost every image we tested, current automatic solutions have only partial success in repairing clipped pixels and work only in limited cases such as only with overexposure (not under-exposure) and when some of the color channels are not clipped. Using neural networks and their ability to model natural images allows our neural network, DeclipNet, to reconstruct data in clipped regions producing state of the art results.