Natural Image Statistics: Foundations and Applications

Abstract

Natural images exhibit statistical regularities that differentiate them from random collections of pixels. Moreover, the human visual system appears to have evolved to exploit such statistical regularities. As computer graphics is concernedwith producing imagery for observation by humans, it would be prudent to understandwhich statistical regularities occur in nature, so they can be emulated by image synthesis methods. In this tutorial we introduce all aspects of natural image statistics, ranging from data collection to analysis and finally their applications in computer graphics, computational photography, image processing and art.