MIXED-ELEMENT STITCHING AND NOISE REDUCTION SYSTEM

摘要

A mixed-element stitching and noise reduction system includes apparatus and methods for producing an image dataset having a reduced noise content without substantially impacting image reproduction accuracy. Such noise reduction is provided by replacing a portion of a first, higher noise image dataset with a portion of a second, lower noise dataset. In a preferred embodiment, two image datasets comprising a color-stitched image and a luminance image are received from a DFP image capturing system in which datasets are obtained from scanning the developing film at different development times. The received images are preferably separately stitched and separately converted to a color-space in which a luminance data channel is separated from image color information. The luminance channel of the luminance image is then preferably substituted for the luminance channel of the color-stitched image. More preferably, a log-time stitching technique is used and the stitched images are each converted to an L*a*b* color space.