False-contour removal by random blurring

Abstract

A method is presented for eliminating spurious brightness discontinuities, or false contours, in areas in which brightness varies gradually, while preserving edge sharpness. The basic idea of the method is to randomly blur points only in the neighborhood of each border on which those spurious brightness discontinuities may occur. The method is used for producing natural appearance of a picture for the human eye, not for picture analysis.