Dr. Bokeh: DiffeRentiable Occlusion-aware Bokeh Rendering

Abstract

Bokeh is widely used in photography to draw attention to the subject while effectively isolating distractions in the background. Computational methods can simulate bokeh effects without relying on a physical camera lens but the inaccurate lens modeling in existing filtering-based methods leads to artifacts that need post-processing or learning-based methods to fix. We propose Dr.Bokeh a novel rendering method that addresses the issue by directly correcting the defect that violates the physics in the current filtering-based bokeh rendering equation. Dr.Bokeh first preprocesses the input RGBD to obtain a layered scene representation. Dr.Bokeh then takes the layered representation and user-defined lens parameters to render photo-realistic lens blur based on the novel occlusion-aware bokeh rendering method. Experiments show that the non-learning based renderer Dr.Bokeh outperforms state-of-the-art bokeh rendering algorithms in terms of photo-realism. In addition extensive quantitative and qualitative evaluations show the more accurate lens model further pushes the limit of a closely related field depth-from-defocus.