Image Smoothing via L₀ Gradient Minimization

Li Xu     Cewu Lu     Yi Xu     Jiaya Jia

The Chinese Univeristy of Hong Kong

Abstract

We present a new image editing method, particularly effective for sharpening major edges by increasing the steepness of transitions while eliminating a manageable degree of low-amplitude structures. The seemingly contradictive effect is achieved in an unconventional optimization framework making use of L₀ gradient minimization, which can globally control how many non-zero gradients are resulted to approximate prominent structures in a structure-sparsity-management manner. Unlike other edge-preserving smoothing approaches, our method does not depend on local features and globally locates important edges. It, as a fundamental tool, finds many applications and is particularly beneficial to edge extraction, clip-art JPEG artifact removal, and non-photorealistic image generation.

Additional Results

• Image Smoothing Examples

• Edge Extraction/Enhancement Examples

• Non-Photorealistic Rendering Examples

• Clip-Art Compression Artifact Removal Examples

• Detail Magnification and Tone Mapping Examples

Downloads

"Image Smoothing via L0 Gradient Minimization" Li Xu, Cewu Lu, Yi Xu, Jiaya Jia ACM Transactions on Graphics, Vol. 30, No. 5 (SIGGRAPH Asia 2011), Dec 2011    [Paper (pdf, 6.5MB)] [BibTeX]   [Matlab Code] [GPU Program with User Interface]   [Presentation PPT]

Video