TONAL BALANCING OF MULTIPLE IMAGES

Method for tonally balancing a image mosaic includes supplying the image mosaic which has multiple overlap regions; identifying in the overlap regions a set of corresponding points that correspond to a single location and are indicative of a tonal variation; establishing a tonal variation threshold; eliminating from the overlap regions a subset of corresponding points, the subset having tonal variation deviating from the tonal variation threshold; repeating the eliminating until substantially all subsets have been eliminated, producing adjusted overlap regions that include a set of remaining corresponding points; obtaining gains and biases for each spectral band in the adjusted overlap regions; applying the gains and biases to transform intensities of the set of remaining corresponding points, producing transformed corresponding points; and producing a tonally balanced image mosaic using the transformed corresponding points.