  Edge-preserving filters play an essential role in some of the most basic
tasks of computational photography, such as abstraction, tonemapping, detail
enhancement and texture removal, to name a few. The abundance and diversity of
smoothing operators, accompanied by a lack of methodology to evaluate output
quality and/or perform an unbiased comparison between them, could lead to
misunderstanding and potential misuse of such methods. This paper introduces a
systematic methodology for evaluating and comparing such operators and
demonstrates it on a diverse set of published edge-preserving filters.
Additionally, we present a common baseline along which a comparison of
different operators can be achieved and use it to determine equivalent
parameter mappings between methods. Finally, we suggest some guidelines for
objective comparison and evaluation of edge-preserving filters.
