Restoration and enhancement of images captured by a digital camera

The success of the digital cameras in the consumer market can no longer be ignored. An obvious advantage over the conventional photography is the fact that the images taken by a digital camera rue readily available, Another important advantage is that there is no additional cost in taking pictures since the images are recorded on magnetic media that can be erased and re-used. For output, there are several possibilities. Today, the only practical solution is to print the images on a desktop color printer (typically based on inkjet technology). Although digital printing services to output batches of digital images on high-quality, photographic paper are already available, they still are quite expensive. We claim that once these services become more affordable for the consumer, the digital photography will start to conquer the market of the conventional photography. This paper will primarily focus on the key digital color image processing software technologies that determine the quality of digital photography. An overview is given of basic image restoration and image enhancement techniques that have to be adapted and optimized in order to cope with the specific challenges of digital photography in publishing applications. Color plane interpolation and artifact removal are examples of basic image restoration techniques to compensate for known degradation phenomena occurring in digital color image sensors. Also color management can be seen as an important color image restoration process to get predictable and consistent color image reproduction. Afterwards, spatial, tonal and color image enhancement techniques are applied to make the images more pleasing and fit for use in publishing applications. In addition to the image processing needs, the importance of open image storage, communication and color management software standards as a key success factor for real-life digital photography systems will also be discussed.