Inside Digital Photography: Technology and Application

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Inside Digital Photography Technology and
Application

• Physics 410/510
• PSU Summer Session 2006
• Instructor Michael A. Kriss.

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Course Outline
Digital Photography combines a vast array of
technologies to create an imaging system that is
quickly displacing conventional silver halide
photography in the consumer and professional
markets, and motion picture productions shift to
all digital systems may be only a few years away.
This course is designed to provide the student
with a comprehensive under standing of the
technology required to make digital photography a
reality. The course will take the student
through the digital imaging chain from optics to
solid state sensors to halftone hard copy,
combing physics, electrical engineering, color
and vision, compression methods, and digital
halftones. The lectures notes are covered by
13 sets, which can be found on the Course Web
Site. In addition to the formal lecture notes, a
series of demonstration of how to use Excel and
Mathematica (MatLab) to model imaging systems and
perform various types of image processing will be
given along with some demonstration on how to use
PhotoShop to modify images.
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Lecture Topics

• 1. Introduction A general overview of the course
• 2. Camera and Sensor Optics
• 3. Physics and Architecture of Imaging Sensors
• 4. Equivalent ISO Speed of Imaging Sensors
• 5. Concept of Resolution in Digital Cameras
• 6. Image Quality in Digital Photography including
  Aliasing
• 7. Color Filter Arrays and Aliasing
• 8. Introduction to Color Vision
• 9. Image Processing for Digital Cameras
• 10. Digital Halftone Technology
• 11. Color Reproduction in Digital Imaging Systems
• 12. Edge Trace Modulation Transfer Functions
• 13. Compression Technology used in Digital
  Imaging Systems

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Tentative Schedule
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Learn about the Digital Imaging Chain
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Learn About Camera Optics
Learn how to design a simple camera optical
system and how to develop optical low-pass
filters that reduce the amount of aliasing in
digital cameras. Learn about micro-lenses and
how thin film interference effects the spectral
sensitivity of sensors.
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Learn About Solid State Sensors
Learn about the differences between frame
transfer and interline transfer CCD imagers and
CMOS imagers. Understand the new buried
photodiode image sensors.
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Learn About Color Science
Learn how the basic response of the cones and
rods lead to a systematic way of defining the
colors we see.
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Learn how Digital Cameras Encode Color and the
Introduction of Aliasing
Learn how a CFA sampled image is interpolated to
a full R-G-B image and how the sampling
introduces color artifacts due to aliasing.
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Learn how to sharpen a digital image using image
processing
Un-sharp masking is a typical method to improve
the sharpness of digital images.
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Learn about Digital Halftones
Most hardcopy images from digital cameras are
reproduced by digital halftones. There is a lot
of science and technology in the development of
good halftones. We will look into many of these
difficult problems.
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Learn About Image Compression
The captured image is broken into a series of 8 x
8 pixel blocks. Each block is transformed into a
spatial frequency domain using a Direct Cosine
Transform. Each block is then compressed and
encoded to reduce the size of the image.
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About Michael Kriss
Dr. Kriss received his Ph.D. in Physics from UCLA
in 1969. He worked for the Eastman Kodak Company
from 1969 through 1992 where his research focused
on image structure, image quality, image
processing and digital imaging systems. Dr.
Kriss managed several laboratories focusing on
digital imaging and spent three years for Kodak
in Japan. Dr. Kriss joined the University of
Rochester in 1993 as a member of the Center for
Electronic Imaging Systems where we became the
Executive Director, and taught digital imaging
courses out of the Electrical and Computer
Engineer Department. Dr. Kriss joined the Sharp
Laboratories of America in Camas, Washington in
1999 and retired in 2004. He currently is active
as a consultant, an officer of the Society of
Imaging Science and Technology, and active in the
development of IST and SPIE conferences.