This years annual ACM SIGGRAPH (Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques) meeting was presented with an incredible image manipulation demonstration by Dr. Ariel Shamir. Dr. Shamir’s technique involves a software algorithm which can identify areas of an image that can be altered (called retargeting) without disrupting the overall image quality. The software understands which part of an image can be removed or even added to so that when the image is enlarged or shrunk the key features remain intact.

example 1.jpg

In the above example the original image is on the left and needs to be resized to a wider display. The technique first identifies then stretches the portion of the image which will be least disrupted to obtain the image on the right.

example 2.jpg

The software next looks for patterns within the image which can be recreated to correct the smearing effect when the image is first stretched to produce the final image on the right.

Dr. Shamir hopes to implement this new retargeting technique across multiple display platforms such as cell phones, notebooks and computer monitors to create a standard by which all images can be displayed correctly no matter how the user chooses to view them.



 

 

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