A Generalized Framework for Edge-preserving and Structure-preserving Image Smoothing
This work addresses the need for flexible image smoothing in computer vision and graphics, offering a generalized solution that can adapt to various application demands, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing optimization methods.
The paper tackles the problem of image smoothing with diverse and sometimes contradictory requirements by proposing a non-convex non-smooth optimization framework using a truncated Huber penalty function, achieving superior performance in several tasks compared to state-of-the-art approaches.
Image smoothing is a fundamental procedure in applications of both computer vision and graphics. The required smoothing properties can be different or even contradictive among different tasks. Nevertheless, the inherent smoothing nature of one smoothing operator is usually fixed and thus cannot meet the various requirements of different applications. In this paper, a non-convex non-smooth optimization framework is proposed to achieve diverse smoothing natures where even contradictive smoothing behaviors can be achieved. To this end, we first introduce the truncated Huber penalty function which has seldom been used in image smoothing. A robust framework is then proposed. When combined with the strong flexibility of the truncated Huber penalty function, our framework is capable of a range of applications and can outperform the state-of-the-art approaches in several tasks. In addition, an efficient numerical solution is provided and its convergence is theoretically guaranteed even the optimization framework is non-convex and non-smooth. The effectiveness and superior performance of our approach are validated through comprehensive experimental results in a range of applications.