Photometric Stereo: Advantages

| Introduction | Advantages | Equations | Gradient & albedo | PS3 vs PS4 |

Photometric stereo is a way in which the ill-posed problems in shading from shading can be resolved. It uses several images of the same surface under different illumination directions. The advantages of photometric stereo are:

• Unlike single image shape from shading algorithms, photometric stereo makes no assumption of the smoothness of the surface (surface partial deriveratives p and q vary continuously over the surface).
• Furthermore, it requires only additional lighting and can be easily implemented at a reasonable computational cost.
• Each image brings along its own unique reflectance map, therefore each image will define a unique set of possible orientations for each point.
• Photometric stereo can recover not only surface orientation (p, q), but also surface albedo.

| Introduction | Advantages | Equations | Gradient & albedo | PS3 vs PS4 |