Wavelet Synthesis Net for Disparity Estimation to Synthesize DSLR Calibre Bokeh Effect on Smartphones

Modern smartphone cameras can match traditional DSLR cameras in many areas thanks to the introduction of camera arrays and multi-frame processing. Among all types of DSLR effects, the narrow depth of field (DoF) or so called bokeh probably arouses most interest. Today's smartphones try to overcome the physical lens and sensor limitations by introducing computational methods that utilize a depth map to synthesize the narrow DoF effect from all-in-focus images. However, a high quality depth map remains to be the key differentiator between computational bokeh and DSLR optical bokeh. Empowered by a novel wavelet synthesis network architecture, we have greatly narrowed the gap between DSLR and smartphone camera in terms of the bokeh more than ever before. We describe three key Modern smartphone cameras can match traditional digital single lens reflex (DSLR) cameras in many areas thanks to the introduction of camera arrays and multi-frame processing. Among all types of DSLR effects, the narrow depth of field (DoF) or so called bokeh probably arouses most interest. Today's smartphones try to overcome the physical lens and sensor limitations by introducing computational methods that utilize a depth map to synthesize the narrow DoF effect from all-in-focus images. However, a high quality depth map remains to be the key differentiator between computational bokeh and DSLR optical bokeh. Empowered by a novel wavelet synthesis network architecture, we have narrowed the gap between DSLR and smartphone camera in terms of bokeh more than ever before. We describe three key enablers of our bokeh solution: a synthetic graphics engine to generate training data with precisely prescribed characteristics that match the real smartphone captures, a novel wavelet synthesis neural network (WSN) architecture to produce unprecedented high definition disparity map promptly on smartphones, and a new evaluation metric to quantify the quality of the disparity map for real images from the bokeh rendering perspective. Experimental results show that the disparity map produced from our neural network achieves much better accuracy than the other state-of-the-art CNN based algorithms. Combining the high resolution disparity map with our rendering algorithm, we demonstrate visually superior bokeh pictures compared with existing top rated flagship smartphones listed on the DXOMARK mobiles.