Subjective Assessment of Post-Processing Methods for Low Light Consumer Photos

Abstract

Consumer photos taken in low light conditions often suffer from substantial undesired capture artifacts, such as shakiness and sensor noise. In this paper, we use rank ordering method to assess the subjective preferences among different postprocessing methods used to alleviate capture artifacts. The results show that most users prefer sharpened photos, even in the presence of substantial sensor noise. However, there are also systematic differences in individual preferences between users. Therefore, user preferences need to be considered in addition to the image characteristics, when selecting the post-processing algorithms and parameters for photo quality enhancement.