GoKawiilResearchers unveil physics-based method to relight photos after image decomposition
Chris Careaga and Yağız Aksoy of Simon Fraser University published a method that splits a single photograph into diffuse albedo, colorful diffuse shading, and specular residual components, moving beyond older models that assumed single-color light and purely matte surfaces. The work, detailed in their SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 paper, received an ACM Transactions on Graphics Best Paper Award Honorable Mention. They report the technique enables applications like removing specular highlights and performing per-pixel white balancing on real-world images.