US Patent 11277646 Reducing banding artifacts in backward-compatible HDR imaging

Methods and systems for reducing banding artifacts when displaying high-dynamic-range images reconstructed from coded reshaped images are described. Given an input image in a high dynamic range (HDR) which is mapped to a second image in a second dynamic range, banding artifacts in a reconstructed HDR image generated using the second image are reduced by a) in darks and mid-tone regions of the input image, adding noise to the input image before being mapped to the second image, and b) in highlights regions of the input image, modifying an input backward reshaping function, wherein the modified backward reshaping function will be used by a decoder to map a decoded version of the second image to the reconstructed HDR image. An example noise generation technique using simulated film-grain noise is provided.