NTIRE 2023 challenge on night photography rendering

Abstract

This paper presents a review of the NTIRE 2023 challenge on night photography rendering. The goal of the challenge was to find solutions that process raw camera images taken in nighttime conditions conditions, and thereby produce a photo-quality output images in the standard RGB (sRGB) space. Unlike the previous year's competition, participants were not provided with a large training dataset for the target sensor. Instead, this time they were given images of a color checker illuminated by a known light source. To evaluate the results, a sufficient number of viewers were asked to assess the visual quality of the proposed solutions, considering the subjective nature of the task. The highest ranking solutions were further ranked by Richard Collins, a renowned photographer. The top ranking participants' solutions effectively represent the state-of-the-art in nighttime photography rendering.