Patent ID: 8780113

Claim:
A method of estimating distances to objects within a scene from a light field comprising a set of images captured from different viewpoints and within multiple color channels using a processor configured by an image processing application, the method comprising: selecting a reference viewpoint relative to the viewpoints of the set of images captured from different viewpoints and within multiple color channels; normalizing the set of images to increase the similarity of pixels from the set of images that correspond in a specific color channel from the multiple color channels; determining depth estimates for pixel locations in an image from the reference viewpoint using at least a subset of the set of images, where a depth estimate for a given pixel location in the image from the reference viewpoint is determined by: identifying pixels in the at least a subset of the set of images that correspond to the given pixel location in the image from the reference viewpoint based upon expected disparity at a plurality of depths; in each of a plurality of color channels selected from the multiple color channels, comparing the similarity of the pixels that are identified as corresponding in the selected color channel at each of the plurality of depths; and selecting the depth from the plurality of depths at which the identified corresponding pixels in each of the plurality of color channels have the highest degree of similarity as a depth estimate for the given pixel location in the image from the reference viewpoint.