The blur effect: perception and estimation with a new no-reference perceptual blur metric

To achieve the best image quality, noise and artifacts are generally removed at the cost of a loss of details generating the blur effect. To control and quantify the emergence of the blur effect, blur metrics have already been proposed in the literature. By associating the blur effect with the edge spreading, these metrics are sensitive not only to the threshold choice to classify the edge, but also to the presence of noise which can mislead the edge detection. Based on the observation that we have difficulties to perceive differences between a blurred image and the same reblurred image, we propose a new approach which is not based on transient characteristics but on the discrimination between different levels of blur perceptible on the same picture. Using subjective tests and psychophysics functions, we validate our blur perception theory for a set of pictures which are naturally unsharp or more or less blurred through one or two-dimensional low-pass filters. Those tests show the robustness and the ability of the metric to evaluate not only the blur introduced by a restoration processing but also focal blur or motion blur. Requiring no reference and a low cost implementation, this new perceptual blur metric is applicable in a large domain from a simple metric to a means to fine-tune artifacts corrections.