All-Clear Image Based Synthesis using Clarity Degree

Image based rendering (IBR) usually produces severe artifacts, typically blur and ghost, for objects not located on the focal plane. To obtain an all clear result, previous works either endeavor to recover scene depth or rest on iterations. These methods are difficult and time-consuming, not suitable for real-time IBR applications. In this paper, we propose a novel all-clear synthesis scheme bypassing tedious depth estimation. Our algorithm directly measures the clarity degree of local regions in pre-rendered images and then optimal blocks are combined. This measurement is motivated by the observation that mean change energies (MCE) are well consistent with the human vision system\´s feeling of "clarity". Furthermore, an efficient pseudo-depth filtering is proposed to alleviate the block effect during combination. Our algorithm gives outstanding performances on both synthetic and real world data. It is also proved to be fast enough for real-time implementation.