Image Composing Apparatus for Starlit Sky Photography
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional cameras struggle to capture images of starlit skies without noise and motion blur, as they require long exposure times, resulting in moving objects appearing as streaks or rotations, which existing techniques partially address by using short-time exposure successive-image pickup and shifting images, but fail to effectively combine images for optimal brightness and clarity.
Innovation Solution
An image composing apparatus and method that continuously captures images with short-time exposures, extracts moving and stationary subject portions, adjusts their positions, and combines them to create a clear, well-lit final image by removing noise and aligning moving objects based on their diurnal motion.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Illumination intensity
If long-time exposure is used to capture starlit sky images, then image brightness is improved, but motion blur and star trails occur
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the long exposure time into multiple short exposure intervals, capturing multiple images at different moments. Each image is then processed to extract moving subject portions (stars) and motionless subject portions (landscapes), which are combined separately to create the final image. This segmentation approach allows the system to achieve long-exposure brightness while avoiding motion blur by processing each short-exposure frame independently.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary extraction of moving and motionless subject portions from each short-exposure image before combining them. By identifying and separating these portions in advance, the system can then reposition the moving subjects to their correct locations while keeping motionless subjects fixed, thereby preventing motion blur in the final composite image.
2Object-affected harmful factors
If successive-exposure image pickup with short-time exposure is used, then motion blur is reduced, but image brightness becomes insufficient
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple short-exposure images through a specific merging process. Moving subject portions are extracted from each image and repositioned to their correct locations, then merged with motionless subject portions that remain fixed at their original positions. This merging of multiple short-exposure frames achieves both reduced motion blur (from short exposures) and sufficient brightness (from cumulative light accumulation).
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a temporal dimension to the image processing by capturing multiple images at different time points during the night. By analyzing the temporal progression of star positions and combining images across this time dimension, the system achieves accurate star positioning and brightness accumulation without motion blur, effectively adding a time-based dimension to traditional spatial image capture.
3Measurement precision
If existing image shifting technique is applied, then moving objects can be tracked, but image combination clarity and brightness are insufficient
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies different processing qualities to different parts of the image. Moving subject portions (stars) are extracted, repositioned, and merged with motionless subject portions (landscapes) that remain fixed. This local differentiation ensures that moving objects are accurately tracked and repositioned while maintaining the clarity and fixed positions of stationary objects, thereby improving overall image combination clarity beyond simple uniform shifting.
Data Source
AI summary
An image obtaining unit continuously obtains plural images each showing a moving subject and motionless subject. Dark current noise is removed from the plural images. Image portions of the moving subject are extracted from the plural images with noise removed, which image portions occupy different positions in the plural images, respectively. Image portions of the motionless subject are extracted from the plural images with noised removed, which image portions occupy the fixed positions in the plural images, respectively. The extracted image portions of the moving subject are moved in the plural images with noise removed based on the corresponding positions in the respective images. The moved image portions of the moving subject are combined with the mage portions of the motionless subject held at the fixed positions in the plural images with noise removed, whereby a shooting image is composed.