A typical goal when enhancing the contrast of images is to increase the perceived contrast without altering the original feel of the
image. Such contrast enhancement can be achieved by modelling Cornsweet profiles into the image. We demonstrate that previous
methods aiming to model Cornsweet profiles for contrast enhancement, often employing the unsharp mask operator, are not robust
to image content. To achieve robustness, we propose a fundamentally di erent vector-centric approach with Cornsweet surfaces.
Cornsweet surfaces are parametrised 3D surfaces (2D in space, 1D in luminance enhancement) that are extruded or depressed in
the luminance dimension to create countershading that respects image structure. In contrast to previous methods, our method is
robust against the topology of the edges to be enhanced and the relative luminance across those edges. In user trials, our solution
was significantly preferred over the most related contrast enhancement method.Kosinka was funded by EPSRC grant EP/H024816/1. Lieng was funded by a scholarship from the Norwegian Government.This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0097849314000405
