A new Tone Mapping (TM) algorithm based on multi-scale decomposition was proposed to solve a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image displayed on an ordinary display device. The algorithm decomposed a HDR image into multiple scales using a Local Edge-Preserving (LEP) filter to smooth the details of the image effectively, while still retaining the salient edges. Then a dynamic range compression function with parameters was proposed according to the characteristics of the decomposed layers and the request of compression. By changing the parameters, the coarse scale layer was compressed and the fine scale layer was boosted, which resulted in compressing the dynamic range of the image and boosting the details. Finally, by restructuring the image and restoring the color, the image after mapping had a good visual quality. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is better than the algorithm proposed by Gu et al.(GU B, LI W J, ZHU M Y, et al. Local edge-preserving multiscale decomposition for high dynamic range image tone mapping ［J］. IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 2013, 22(1): 70-79) and Yeganeh et al. (YEGANEH H, WANG Z. Objective quality assessment of tone-mapped images ［J］. IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 2013, 22(2): 657-667) in naturalness, structural fidelity and quality assessment; moreover, it avoids the halo artifacts which is a common problem existing in the local tone mapping algorithms. The algorithm can be used for the tone mapping of the HDR image.
