Patent ID: 7974447

Claim:
An image synthesizing device for synthesizing a second image of an object in a predetermined illumination condition from a first image of the object, the image synthesizing device comprising: a non-transitory memory device storing a synthesizing program, the synthesizing program being executable by a processor; an illumination condition estimation section configured to estimate an illumination condition including an illumination direction and an intensity of the object in the first image from a luminance value of the first image; a normal information estimation section configured to estimate normal information containing a normal direction of the object, with regard to a predetermined pixel in the first image, based on the illumination condition estimated by the illumination condition estimation section; an error component information estimation section configured to estimate information of an error component other than a diffuse reflection component in a luminance value of the predetermined pixel in the first image, and estimating error component information in the predetermined illumination condition, from the estimated error component information of the error component in the luminance value of the predetermined pixel in the first image; and an image synthesizing section configured to synthesize the second image of the object in the predetermined illumination condition, from the normal information of the object estimated by the normal information estimation section, and the error component information in the predetermined illumination condition estimated by the error component information estimation section, wherein the normal information estimation section estimates the normal information of the predetermined pixel, from information of a plurality of the pixels in the first image, by estimating the normal direction based on a statistical model calculated by a learning image previously based on the information of the plurality of pixels, the statistical model being a statistical model of each vector of an image generation model represented by: Y = L T ⁢ B + V Y = [ i 1 i 2 ⋮ i d - 1 i d ] ⁢ L T = [ S t 0 0 0 0 0 S t 0 0 0 0 0 S t 0 0 0 0 0 ⋱ 0 0 0 0 0 S t ] ⁢ B = [ b 1 b 2 ⋮ b d - 1 b d ] ⁢ V = [ e 1 e 2 ⋮ e d - 1 e d ] where Y is an image vector of a pixel, L T is an illumination matrix in which transposed matrix S T of illumination matrix S is diagonally arranged, B is a normal albedo vector, and V is an error vector.