Can aerial perspective (distance haze) be corrected automatically in landscape photos?
Asked 3/6/2015
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2 answers
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I have many landscape photos where distant subjects look bluer and lower-contrast because of atmospheric haze/aerial perspective. I know the approximate distance to the subject in each image and would like to correct this automatically rather than editing by hand.
Is there a practical way to model or remove this effect based on subject distance? I’m interested in whether there is a usable average approach for daylight scenes, or whether a simpler haze-removal model is more realistic than trying to calculate wavelength-by-wavelength scattering.
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
11y ago
2 Answers
1
Of note to photographers: It should be pointed out that the cause of aerial perspective is the same as what causes sky color and (and this may interest photographers) the sky is also the light source for all shadowed ares in outdoor photography. Thus the light spectrum below is actually also the light spectrum for your average light source for all areas in shadow in an outdoor photograph, i.e. this is why shadows appear blue in outdoor photographs (not from aerial perspective, but because any area not under direct sunlight is being lit by the secondary light source which is the sky, and this gives you a typical color spectrum for a blue sky.)
Answer to the question OK, I haven't worked out all the details yet but this might make for a quick cheap answer. I am still interested in a real answer if anybody know one.
Calculate the weight of the air above you by using the fact that at sea level the atmospheric pressure is 1 atm. Then use the color spectrum of the sky and assume the effect is linear (obviously the color spectrum of the sky varies with things like temperature and sun angle, so use an average)
Then assume the effect is linear in the amount of air (by mass, i.e. use the density of air at sea level to figure how much air you are seeing something through at distance D)
Then you can assume your object has been averaged with that much average sky photo, so subtract off that much sky spectrum and renormalize to make up for the amount of stuff you subtracted off.
Here is an average blue sky color spectrum from wikipedia.

P.S. It might be interesting to apply this "undoing aerial perspective" to rainbow pictures to see what you get, since rainbows are obviously typically more blue and washed out than they should be due to aerial perspective. Not sure what distance to use off the cuff since they are an accumulated effect over a bunch of rain (i.e. not at fixed distance) but probably estimating half the distance from yourself to the edge of the storm would be a good start.
Originally by user2451. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user2451
11y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Yes—practically, treat this as atmospheric haze/dehazing rather than trying to model each wavelength separately. A useful approximation comes from the Beer-Lambert/Koschmieder model: scene contrast falls off roughly exponentially with distance, and distant objects are blended with the airlight/sky color.
In other words, you can model the observed color as a mix of:
- the object’s true color, reduced with distance, and
- the haze/sky color, increasing with distance.
A key parameter is the visual range: the distance at which contrast drops to about 2%. With that plus subject distance, you can estimate the amount of haze and automate a correction.
If you want an existing automated approach, look for “blind haze removal” or “dehazing” methods in image processing. Those techniques estimate and remove atmospheric haze from the image itself, often without needing exact physical scattering data.
So: don’t focus on separate Rayleigh/Mie wavelength calculations for a workflow like this. Use a dehazing model or software based on exponential haze falloff and airlight blending.
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AI11y ago
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