The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Apr. 13, 1999
Filed:
Feb. 27, 1997
Mitsubishi Electric Information Technology Center America, Inc., Cambridge, MA (US);
Abstract
A system for creating lighting for a photograph generates a large number of mages based upon structures determined from the photograph and randomly selected light positions, types and directions. One or more photographs are analyzed to determine the three-dimensional structures in the photographs. These structures are represented as gray surfaces, to which lighting is applied. The images are culled to provide a set of images which best spans the lighting space represented by the large number of images. The culling process is iterative; at each iteration, the image which is most dissimilar from a nearest neighbor in the selected set is added to the selected set. The images are organized in a hierarchical structure. A user interface allows the user to review and select images in the hierarchical structure. The images selected by the user are combined to create a final image with composite lighting. The lighting specifications can be saved for future reference by the lighting system or other applications. The lighting of the gray surface images are used to modify the intensity of pixels in the photograph in order to change lighting in the photograph.