Poisson Local Color Correction for Image Stitching

A new method for seamless image stitching is presented. The proposed algorithm is a hybrid method which uses optimal seam methods and smoothes the intensity transition between two images by color correction. A dynamic programming algorithm that finds an optimal seam along which gradient disparities are minimized is used. A modification of Poisson image editing is utilized to correct color differences between two images. Different boundary conditions for the Poisson equation were investigated and tested, and mixed boundary conditions generated the most accurate results. To evaluate and compare the proposed method with competing ones, a large image database consisting of more than two hundred image pairs was created. The test image pairs are taken at different lighting conditions, scene geometries and camera positions. On this database the proposed approach tested favorably as compared to standard methods and has shown to be very effective in producing visually acceptable images.