Highlighted Depth-of-Field Photography: Shining Light on Focus

We present a photographic method to enhance intensity differences between objects at varying distances from the focal plane. By combining a unique capture procedure with simple image processing techniques, the detected brightness of an object is decreased proportional to its degree of defocus. A camera-projector system casts distinct grid patterns onto a scene to generate a spatial distribution of point reflections. These point reflections relay a relative measure of defocus that is utilized in postprocessing to generate a highlighted DOF photograph. Trade-offs between three different projector-processing pairs are analyzed, and a model is developed to help describe a new intensity-dependent depth of field that is controlled by the pattern of illumination. Results are presented for a primary single snapshot design as well as a scanning method and a comparison method. As an application, automatic matting results are presented.