Ektopia

Lil’ Pete (aka Mr FOA2) has posted a couple of examples of what can be done with the stunning little online photo-manipulation application Rsizr. It allows you to resize and crop your photos but here’s why it’s different -

“resize images using a new image resizing algorithm called seam carving (a method of image retargeting) that tries to keep intact areas in your image that are richer in detail […] This algorithm alters the dimensions of an image not by scaling or cropping, but rather by intelligently removing pixels from (or adding pixels to) the image that carry little importance. The importance of a pixel is generally measured by its contrast when compared with its neighbor pixels, but other measures may be used. Additionally, it’s possible to define (or autodetect) areas of high importance (faces, buildings, etc.) in which pixels may not be deleted, and conversely, areas of zero importance which should be removed first. From this information, the algorithm detects seams (continuous lines of pixels joining opposite edges of the image) which have the lowest importance, and deletes those. This shrinks the image by one horizontal or vertical line, depending on which direction the seam ran. Seam carving can also be run in reverse by adding interpolated pixels along the lowest energy seam. With this technique, it’s now possible to reduce or enlarge pictures by a wide range, while still retaining details. In normal image scaling, it’s often not possible to scale about factor greater than 2 or less than 0.5, without losing much of the images quality”.

Here’s a not particularly great example of what it can do. The top image is my wife a few years back and the bottom one has been vertically compressed and horizontally expanded to create a squarer image while keeping the image structure complete as well as my wife! There’s another important aspect of the technology too. You can not only determine what’s important in the images but also what’s not important and the later will be removed first. So, dust off all those photos of you and your ex and just remove them! Take a look at the video (or here for the smaller YouTube version) and whole thing will make a lot more sense. [via]