====== Shape Estimation in Natural Illumination ======

==== Micah K. Johnson and Edward H. Adelson ====

===== Abstract =====

The traditional shape-from-shading problem, with a single light source and Lambertian reflectance, is challenging since the constraints implied by the illumination are not sufficient to specify local orientation. Photometric stereo algorithms, a variant of shape-from-shading, simplify the problem by controlling the illumination to obtain additional constraints. In this paper, we demonstrate that many natural lighting environments already have sufficient variability to constrain local shape. We describe a novel optimization scheme that exploits this variability to estimate surface normals from a single image of a diffuse object in natural illumination. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method on both simulated and real images.

===== Information =====


---- dataentry pubitem ----
title       : Shape Estimation in Natural Illumination
authors     : Micah K. Johnson and Edward H. Adelson
citation    : IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
shortcite   : CVPR
year        : 2011
created_dt  : 2011-06-01
keyword_tags: adelson
summary_page : publications:cvpr11
pdf_url     : http://people.csail.mit.edu/kimo/publications/shape/sfs_cvpr11.pdf
pageid      : cvpr11
type        : publication
----