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Author Topic: "Content-Aware Image Resizing!! OMG!!!!!!!".. Calm down: it's useless  (Read 13936 times)

mouser

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Recently websites across the internet have been going apoplectic over this video and article on "Content-Aware Image Sizing".

Screenshot - 8_23_2007 , 4_02_58 PM_thumb.png

Basically it's a complicated academic process that tries to automatically figure out where non-rectangular chunks of an image can be automatically identified and removed to resize the image to a target size while preserving the "important parts" of the image.

Look, this is a wonderful academic subject, but it falls firmly into the designation of things that can be done better, faster, cleaner, more reliably, and more elegantly with a much simpler process.

As fun as this is, you'll never see this technology in real use -- it's just a clever hack that's not going to yield good results on normal images in a practical way.

Trying to automate this is going to result in some very ugly images with very obvious seams and unpleasant artifacts.

Sometimes the simpler approach is the better approach.

If you want to be smart about resizing images to fit them into different dimensions, the answer is very simple:
  • Create an image format that allows the author to easily and optionally indicate multiple preferred crop regions or multiple actual different images of different sizes and have a server or client display script that chooses the best crop regions to use given the available display space, with some minimal resizing to do final tweaks.

Such an approach would also let the client zoom or move around the image if they wanted.  Folks, this isn't rocket science, you're over-complicating things when a simpler approach would work better and could be implemented tomorrow.
« Last Edit: August 23, 2007, 04:15 PM by mouser »

lanux128

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is that from the website with live bear-cam? i read about them in some magazine..

justice

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I think they should focus on auto-crop video if that isn't what they're doing. By comparing multiple frames you can keep focus on a subject. But I'm sure that's already done by speed camera software.

Perry Mowbray

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I haven't seen the video yet, but I'd think that the "automated" part of it would only be useful for display purposes, not actual image manipulation.

For example, displaying an image on a web page, or photo album, of a much larger photo would really benefit from this type of thing.

nitrix-ud

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IMHO (as a web designer) this would make a very very good feature pour Adobe Photoshop CS4  :Thmbsup:

cybernetnews

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I think this does have it's place in the photo editing arena, and is something we could see in future versions of Photoshop or even better Paint.NET. It's not something the people would use on a regular basis, but look at how easily and cleanly people can be removed from photos.

mouser

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I would definitely agree with the comments that this kind of a function would be useful in an image editor.  It would likely be a fairly sophisticated tool with some powerful masking options and manual adjustments.  In this use it would probably be less used for size adjustment and more for modifying the aesthetics of the picture, i.e. "cropping information *inside* the image".

ps.
very cool signature technology! maybe you can a separate post and tell us what you used for it.

cybernetnews

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Glad you like the signature. :)

It actually just uses our FeedBurner feed to rotate through our items. It's a feature FeedBurner offers called Headline Animator:
http://www.feedburne...378E19529782B35E.fb1

You can use a custom background with it, and rearrange the positiong of items. It only takes a few seconds to make after you've created your background image.

TOOWILD

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I agree, this would be good as a "Smart crop" for the paint "challenged" but for motion video - lets see how it handles crazy motion like music video.
Cute concept for a thesis paper and nothing more.

PhilB66

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TOOWILD

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I looks like he just applies a soble filter convolve and then uses the low frequency areas of the image to decide where to stretch or squash.
He must have more complex ideas that Abobe is interested in. Otherwise thay would have just taken the information. Im guessing he has something really brilliant he impressed them with that has not been made public - not just this. Not that this is not interesting, it just wouldn't need to have a specialist come in to do it for adobe.

Echan

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Re: "Content-Aware Image Resizing!! OMG!!!!!!!".. Calm down: it's useless
« Reply #11 on: September 29, 2007, 02:36 AM »
I had played with it for a few pictures. It really not very useful other than the potential of erasing objects. But the masking has to be very careful or very noticeable manipulation / artifacts.
 :-\