In the context of image processing for edge detection or in my case a basic SIFT implementation:
When taking the ‘difference’ of 2 Gaussian blurred images, you are bound to get pixels whose difference is negative (they are originally between 0 – 255, when subtracting they are possibly between -255 – 255). What is the normal approach to ‘fixing’ this? I don’t see taking the absolute value to be very correct in this situation.
There are two different approaches depending on what you want to do with the output.
The first is to offset the output by 128, so that your calculation range of -128 to 127 maps to 0 to 255.
The second is to clamp negative values so that they all equal zero.