How Color Profile Affects the Visual Quality in Light Field Rendering and Novel View Synthesis

This paper investigates the impact of image color profile on the visual quality
in light field rendering. Light field rendering methods require several input
views, capturing the same scene from different camera positions. These views can
be captured in real life by cameras or rendered from synthetic 3D scenes. A novel
view can be synthesized from the input views, capturing the scene from a virtual
camera position. Modern cinematography makes use of various color profiles that
affect how the measured light on the camera sensor is translated into the color
values of the digital image. Different profiles can be used for different
purposes, be it artistic or pragmatic to reveal necessary details. The main
scientific question of this paper is if certain color profiles can lead to better
quality of the novel view synthesis in light field rendering. The paper shows
that logarithmic profiles can significantly improve the visual quality. Three
light field rendering methods from different categories were used to compare 17
widely used color profiles. Additional measurements show that post processing and
color grading need to be applied at the very end of the rendering pipeline to
ensure the best quality. Also, the effect of denoising algorithms on light field
rendering is measured.