Patent ID: 7269296

Claim:
A method for shoot suppression in image detail enhancement, comprising the steps of: (a) selecting image details for enhancement, wherein the selected image details are represented by a detail signal that is a function of an image signal f and a filtered version of the image signal f; (b) determining a shoot suppression factor s for the detail signal at each pixel position based on the image characteristics of the pixels neighboring a current image pixel in order to substantially suppress shoot artifacts in the enhanced image details; and (c) applying the shoot suppression factor s to the detail signal, wherein step (b) further includes the steps of: determining a symmetry factor α based on luminance values of pixels neighboring a current image pixel, wherein the symmetry factor represents amount of symmetry in the luminance curve of the neighboring pixels with reference to the current pixel position, and determining the shoot suppression factor s based on the symmetry factor α, wherein: for an essentially symmetric luminance curve, lower shoot suppression is selected, and for an essentially asymmetric luminance curve, higher shoot suppression is selected.