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Low-light images are challenging for both human observation and computer vision algorithms due to low visibility. To address this issue, various image enhancement techniques such as dehazing, histogram equalization, and neural network-based methods have been proposed. However, most existing methods often suffer from the problems of insufficient contrast and over-enhancement while enhancing the brightness, which not only affects the visual quality of images but also adversely impacts their subsequent analysis and processing. To tackle these problems, this paper proposes a low-light image enhancement method called LEFB. Specifically, the low-light image is first transformed into the LAB color space, and the L channel controlling brightness is enhanced using a local contrast enhancement algorithm. Then, the enhanced image is further enhanced using an exposure fusion-based contrast enhancement algorithm, and finally, a bilateral filtering function is applied to reduce image edge blurriness. Experimental evaluations are conducted on real datasets with four comparison algorithms. The results demonstrate that the proposed method has superior performance in enhancing low-light images, effectively addressing problems of insufficient contrast and over-enhancement, while preserving fine details and texture information, resulting in more natural and realistic enhanced images.

Many different histogram equalization (HE)-based image enhancement methods have been developed to overcome the problems of low or high image brightness, contrast sensitivity, and difficulty in revealing details of dark areas under low-light environments. In this paper, a novel image enhancement method based on HE and adaptive gamma correction with weight distribution (AGCWD) is proposed for natural and effective image enhancement. In this method, histogram stretching is performed on Red–Green–Blue (RGB) color components of image, and then the color space of RGB image is converted to Hue–Saturation–Intensity (HSI) color space. The histograms of S and I components are divided into sub-histograms according to the exposure threshold. The underexposure regions are enhanced with a new AGCWD. Then, the color space of HSI image is converted to RGB color space. Finally, the HE is applied to the input image with the obtained image histogram map. Thus, the method has not only effectively prevented the over-enhancement of the contrast but also obtained the quality and natural enhanced image. The proposed method is compared with the most known contrast enhancement methods and low-light enhancement methods. Experimental results have supported that the proposed method outperforms other methods in terms of both visual perception and objective evaluation.