Estimating Natural Illumination from a Single Outdoor Image

Abstract

Given a single outdoor image, we present a method for estimating the likely illumination conditions of the scene. In particular, we compute the probability distribution over the sun position and visibility. The method relies on a combination of weak cues that can be extracted from different portions of the image: the sky, the vertical surfaces, and the ground. While no single cue can reliably estimate illumination by itself, each one can reinforce the others to yield a more robust estimate. This is combined with a data-driven prior computed over a dataset of 6 million Internet photos. We present quantitative results on a webcam dataset with annotated sun positions, as well as qualitative results on consumer-grade photographs downloaded from Internet. Based on the estimated illumination, we show how to realistically insert synthetic 3-D objects into the scene.