Patent ID: 8873877

Claim:
A method for converting input images, comprising: a) receiving an input image in a sequence of images, wherein the input image has a first dynamic range; b) converting the input image into a second image, wherein the second image has a second dynamic range, which is lower than the first dynamic range, and wherein the conversion is based on a dynamic range compression function that comprises one or more parameters; c) computing a residual image using the input image and the second image; d) determining whether the residual image has at least one false contour; and e) upon determining that the residual image has at least one false contour, adjusting at least one of the parameters, wherein the determining step d) comprises a pixel-level detection method and a picture-level detection method, wherein the pixel-level detection method comprises computing pixel-level false contour indicators based on a respective median of a normalized standard deviation of all pixels in a surrounding area of a respective pixel in the residual image, wherein the picture-level detection method comprises computing a false contours detection (FCD) metric as a function of a number of connected block level false contour indicators that are computed for blocks of the residual image based on one or more pixel-level false contour indicators.