Patent ID: 8203579

Claim:
A method for selecting a display source light illumination level, said method comprising: a) generating an image histogram for an image to be displayed on a display device; b) receiving image histogram data and a user-selected one of a plurality of stored maps at a mapping module, each map associating an image pixel brightness characteristic to a display model maximum brightness attribute; c) determining an image pixel brightness characteristic based on said histogram data; d) associating said display model maximum brightness attribute with said image pixel brightness characteristic using the selected said map and said mapping module; e) generating a display model based on said user-selected output brightness level and said display model maximum brightness attribute; f) calculating model clipping limits for said display model; g) calculating a display error vector for each of a plurality of source light illumination levels; h) combining said display error vectors with said histogram data to determine a distortion value for said plurality of source light illumination levels; and i) selecting a source light illumination level based on said distortion values.