Patent ID: 7508993

Claim:
A computer-implemented process for correcting the exposure of improperly exposed pixels of an image, comprising using a computer to perform the following process actions: linearly expanding the dynamic range of the intensity levels of the image pixels so as to match the full dynamic intensity range available to a desired degree, wherein said linear expansion comprises, computing a histogram of the intensity levels of the image pixels, computing the lowermost and uppermost intensity levels that are consistent with the overall distribution of intensity levels in the image, computing new lowermost and uppermost intensity levels that span the full dynamic intensity range available to a desired degree, and employing the originally computed lowermost and uppermost intensity levels and the new lowermost and uppermost intensity levels to establish a linear intensity correction transform that maps the original intensity level of each pixel in the image to a linearly expanded intensity level, applying the linear intensity correction transform to each pixel of the image; determining whether the linearly expanded intensity levels of the image pixels are evenly distributed; and whenever the linearly expanded intensity levels of the pixels are determined not to be evenly distributed, applying a correction factor to the linearly expanded intensity level of each pixel in the image to produce a corrected intensity value for each pixel and evenly distributed intensity levels.