<?xml version="1.0"?>
                <!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//NLM//DTD Journal Publishing DTD v3.0 20080202//EN" "journalpublishing3.dtd">
                <article article-type="research-article" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"
                xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
                xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
                dtd-version="3.0">
                <front>
                    <journal-meta>
                    <journal-id journal-id-type="publisher-id">cic</journal-id>
                    <journal-title>Color and Imaging Conference</journal-title>
                    <issn pub-type="ppub">2166-9635</issn><issn pub-type="epub">2166-9635</issn>
                    <publisher>
                        <publisher-name>Society for Imaging Science and Technology</publisher-name>
                        <publisher-loc>IS&amp;T 7003 Kilworth Lane, Springfield, VA 22151 USA</publisher-loc>
                    </publisher>
                    </journal-meta>
                    <article-meta>
                    <article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.2352/CIC.2025.33.1.41</article-id>
                    <article-id pub-id-type="publisher-id">41</article-id>
                    <article-categories>
                        <subj-group>
                        <subject>Proceedings Paper</subject>
                        </subj-group>
                    </article-categories>
                    <title-group>
                        <article-title>Very Simple Tone Curves</article-title>
                    </title-group><contrib-group content-type="all"><contrib contrib-type="author"><name>
                            <surname>Bennett</surname>
                            <given-names>James </given-names>
                           </name> <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1author1"/></contrib><aff id="aff1author1">University of East Anglia, UK</aff></contrib-group><contrib-group content-type="all"><contrib contrib-type="author"><name>
                            <surname>Finlayson</surname>
                            <given-names>Graham </given-names>
                           </name> <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1author2"/></contrib><aff id="aff1author2">University of East Anglia, UK</aff></contrib-group><abstract>
                    <title>Abstract</title>
                    <p>Tone mapping algorithms are used to compress dynamic range, make image details more conspicuous and generally enhance the image for preference. Global tone mapping manipulates the brightnesses of pixels by applying a single function - or tone curve - to every pixel in the image. Tone curve generation algorithms often constrain the shape of their tone curves and it has been argued that tone curves should be simple, meaning they have one or zero inflexion points. In this work, we investigate whether tone curves should be simplified even further. We present our method which finds the zero inflexion tone curve - which we call a Very Simple (VS) curve - that best approximates a potentially complex tone curve. For the MIT-Adobe FiveK dataset, comprising 25,000 expert tone adjustments, we calculate the best VS approximations and find these curves produce visually similar images compared with more complex counterparts.</p>
                    </abstract><pub-date>
                        <day>27</day>
                        <month>10</month>
                        <year>2025</year>
                        </pub-date><volume>33</volume>
                    <issue-acronym>CIC</issue-acronym>
                    <issue-title>33rd Color and Imaging Conference Final Program and Proceedings</issue-title>
                    <issue seq="41">1</issue>
                    <fpage>221</fpage>
                    <lpage>226</lpage>
                    <permissions>
                         <copyright-statement>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.</copyright-statement>
                        <copyright-year>2025</copyright-year>
                    </permissions><kwd-group><kwd>tone mapping</kwd><kwd>tone curves</kwd><kwd>image enhancement</kwd><kwd>quadratic programming</kwd><kwd>inflexion points</kwd></kwd-group></article-meta>
                </front>
                </article>