Dolby (Canada)

This paper evaluates a new method for capturing surfaces with variations in albedo, height, and local orientation using a standard digital camera with three flash units. Similar to other approaches, captured areas are assumed to be globally flat and largely diffuse. Fortunately, this encompasses a wide array of interesting surfaces, including most materials found in the built environment, e.g., masonry, fabrics, floor coverings, and textured paints. We present a case study of naive subjects who found that surfaces captured with our method, when rendered under novel lighting and view conditions, were statistically indistinguishable from photographs. This is a significant improvement over previous methods, to which our results are also compared.

We introduce a new metric for dynamic range of displays that closely corresponds with human perception in practical settings. The Number of Distinguishable Grays is a count of the visible luminance steps from the deepest black to the brightest white a display produces under known ambient conditions.

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