Re-illuminating single images using Albedo estimation

Predicting the appearance of a scene under novel lighting conditions is of growing interest at the convergence of vision, graphics and virtual reality. In this paper, we develop a method for appearance prediction from a single image using the apparatus of shape from shading (SFS). We re-visit the reflectance estimation process first proposed by Blake (Graphics Image Process. 32 (1985) 314), and develop a novel approach to parameter selection within the Blake method based on the quality of images which can be produced by re-illuminating the recovered needle-map. Combining Blake's method with recent advances in SFS is demonstrated to yield significant improvements in the appearance prediction of real images under varying lighting conditions.