NTIRE 2023 Image Shadow Removal Challenge Report

Florin-Alexandru Vasluianu, Tim Seizinger, Radu Timofte, Shuhao Cui, Junshi Huang, Shuman Tian, Mingyuan Fan, Jiaqi Zhang, Li Zhu, Xiaoming Wei, Xiaolin Wei, Ziwei Luo, Fredrik K. Gustafsson, Zheng Zhao, Jens Sjölund, Thomas B. Schön, Xiaoyi Dong, Xi Sheryl Zhang, Chenghua Li, Cong Leng et al. (81 additional authors not shown)

Abstract: This work reviews the results of the NTIRE 2023 Challenge on Image Shadow Removal. The described set of solutions were proposed for a novel dataset, which captures a wide range of object-light interactions. It consists of 1200 roughly pixel aligned pairs of real shadow free and shadow affected images, captured in a controlled environment. The data was captured in a white-box setup, using professional equipment for lights and data acquisition sensors. The challenge had a number of 144 participants registered, out of which 19 teams were compared in the final ranking. The proposed solutions extend the work on shadow removal, improving over the performance level describing state-of-the-art methods.