Removal of uneven illumination in panorama using illumination transfer

The composite images in a panorama may becaptured in different light conditions, which leads to differentcolors of the same scene in consecutive images. The existingcolor smoothing methods only narrow the color difference inthe connection of two images. The existing color correctionmethods fail when the illumination difference is large. Sousually there are some seams or color blocks in the resultingpanoramas. This paper proposes a new illumination correctand transfer method to keep the color consistency in apanorama. Firstly, it decomposes all the composite images intoillumination and reflectance components based on the Retinextheory. Secondly, one of the above illumination components isselected as the ground truth illumination, and otherillumination components are adjusted to the ground truthillumination based on a global illumination mapping model.Thirdly, all the adjusted illuminations are transferred back tothe original images. Image stitching is performed with theseadjusted images. Compared with the state of the art, theproposed method can generate consistent, nature illuminationin panoramas without producing color blocks and residualseams, especially when the illumination difference is large.