ABSTRACT
The transformation of digital camera raw sensor image data into a full-color fully processed image involves a complex chain of computations. The possible orderings of individual operations and associated implementation details that constitute the image processing chain can lead to a sea of permutations. However, despite this seemingly immense number of available degrees of freedom, the problem of image processing chain design is overconstrained. Image quality must be maximized while compute resource use must be minimized. It is the minimization of required computational effort that, in fact, severely restricts the number of degrees of freedom in the image processing chain design problem. Consequently, image processing operations that are highly effective may not be viable candidates for image processing chain for constrained compute environments. In the end, the process of designing an image processing chain becomes one of taking relatively simple, well-known image processing operations and staging them in a manner that produces the best synergistic effects.
