Description

we propose a novel prior—dark channel prior—for single image haze removal. The dark channel prior is based on the statistics of outdoor haze-free images. We find that, in most of the local regions which do not cover the sky, some pixels (called dark pixels) very often have very low intensity in at least one color (RGB) channel. In hazy images, the intensity of these dark pixels in that channel is mainly contributed by the airlight. Therefore, these dark pixels can directly provide an accurate estimation of the haze transmission. Combining a haze imaging model and a soft matting interpolation method, we can recover a high-quality hazefree image and produce a good depth map.