GoPro, Inc.
METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR BLENDING UNKNOWN PIXELS IN OVERLAPPING IMAGES

Abstract:

Methods and apparatus for blending unknown pixels in overlapping images. In one embodiment, an action camera captures two hyper-hemispherical fisheye images that are stitched to a 360.degree. panorama. In order to remove exposure differences between the two cameras, the images are pre-processed prior to multiband blending. The pre-processing leverages image information from pixels to make informed guesses about pixels that were not captured. In particular, various pixels with different knowability (e.g., known, unknown, consistent, and conflicting) may be handled differently so as to emphasize/de-emphasize their importance in pre-processing.