Abstract: Image values are the result of a combination of visual information coming from multiple sources. Recovering information from the multiple factors thatproduced an image seems a hard and ill-posed problem. However, it is important to observe that humans develop the ability to interpret images and recognize and isolate specific physical properties of the scene.
Images describing a single physical characteristic of an scene are called intrinsic images. These images would benefit most computer vision tasks which are often affected by the multiple complex effects that are usually found in natural images (e.g. cast shadows, specularities, interreflections...).
In this thesis we analyze the problem of intrinsic image estimation from different perspectives, including the theoretical formulation of the problem, the visual cues that can be used to estimate the intrinsic components and the evaluation mechanisms of the problem.