  The very sharp decrease of density with heliocentric distance makes imaging
of coronal density structures out to a few solar radii challenging. The radial
gradient in brightness can be reduced using numerous image processing
techniques, thus quantitative data are manipulated to provide qualitative
images. Introduced in this study is a new normalizing radial graded filter
(NRGF), a simple filter for removing the radial gradient to reveal coronal
structure. Applied to polarized brightness observations of the corona, the NRGF
produces images which are striking in their detail. Total brightness white
light images include contributions from the F corona, stray light and other
instrumental contributions which need to be removed as effectively as possible
to properly reveal the electron corona structure. A new procedure for
subtracting this background from LASCO C2 white light total brightness images
is introduced. The background is created from the unpolarized component of
total brightness images and is found to be remarkably time-invariant, remaining
virtually unchanged over the solar cycle. By direct comparison with polarized
brightness data, we show that the new background subtracting procedure is
superior in depicting coronal structure accurately, particularly when used in
conjunction with the NRGF. The effectiveness of the procedures is demonstrated
on a series of LASCO C2 observations of a coronal mass ejection (CME).
