Highlighted depth-of-field photography: Shining light on focus

• Main Authors: Kim, Jaewon (Contributor), Horstmeyer, Roarke William (Contributor), Kim, Ig-Jae (Contributor), Raskar, Ramesh (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory (Contributor), Program in Media Arts and Sciences (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Association for Computing Machinery, 2011-09-27T19:37:52Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

 We present a photographic method to enhance intensity differences between objects at varying distances from the focal plane. By combining a unique capture procedure with simple image processing techniques, the detected brightness of an object is decreased proportional to its degree of defocus. A camera-projector system casts distinct grid patterns onto a scene to generate a spatial distribution of point reflections. These point reflections relay a relative measure of defocus that is utilized in postprocessing to generate a highlighted DOF photograph. Trade-offs between three different projectorprocessing pairs are analyzed, and a model is developed to help describe a new intensity-dependent depth of field that is controlled by the pattern of illumination. Results are presented for a primary single snapshot design as well as a scanning method and a comparison method. As an application, automatic matting results are presented.