A common framework for ambient illumination in the dichromatic reflectance model

The dichromatic reflectance model has been successfully applied on different tasks in color research, such as color constancy and highlight or shadow segmentation. In its original version, it incorporates only one direct illuminant. In this work, we analyze a recently published model, the Bi-Illuminant Dichromatic Reflectance Model (BIDR) proposed by Maxwell et al., that extends the dichromatic reflectance model for a very general ambient term. The proposed method can represent optical phenomena like interreflections and inhomogeneous ambient light. We will show that this new model is sufficiently general, in the sense that it encompasses established variations and extensions to the dichromatic reflectance model.