Photo-unrealistic Image Enhancement for Subject Placement in Outdoor Photography

TL;DR

This paper presents a real-time software method to improve outdoor photography by enhancing image contrast, helping users correctly position subjects despite display reflections in bright conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel real-time image enhancement technique using contrasting colors to aid subject placement in outdoor photography.

Findings

Users struggled to locate landmarks in 37% of sunny conditions

The proposed contrast-based enhancement significantly improves landmark visibility

The method is practical and effective for outdoor photography scenarios

Abstract

Camera display reflections are an issue in bright light situations, as they may prevent users from correctly positioning the subject in the picture. We propose a software solution to this problem, which consists in modifying the image in the viewer, in real time. In our solution, the user is seeing a posterized image which roughly represents the contour of the objects. Five enhancement methods are compared in a user study. Our results indicate that the problem considered is a valid one, as users had problems locating landmarks nearly 37% of the time under sunny conditions, and that our proposed enhancement method using contrasting colors is a practical solution to that problem.