empirical priors for images

Once again, talk at Camp Hogg came around to empirical priors for images. Schölkopf and Hirsch (MPI-IS) were inspired to talk about it because of Krishnan's PhD defense yesterday. Fadely, Fergus, and I have been using empirical priors—priors based on the sum total of all previously observed data—to build our science-data-based image calibration system (which itself is a project suggested to us by Schölkopf last year). We discussed nearest neighbors and alternatives, and also how to build this prior in the "calibrated image" space but use it to predict in the "raw image" space. That is a detail that I think has to be important; I plan to work more on it tonight.