Monday, September 10, 2007

Bending reality

I like to consider myself a master image-tweaker -- I've Photoshopped people out of photos, fixed blemishes and creases, and recast images for use as logo-like art. But this video just blew my mind -- they've found a way to encode which parts of an image include content (say, the mountains and trees, as opposed to the open sky), so that you can scale the image without distorting the main features. Essentially, instead of removing uniform bands of the image, as cropping would, it removes "seams" of low-content pixels one at a time (or adds them, when you're scaling up) so that you have the effect of less change to the main features of the image. Their software also allows certain features to be tagged for either protection (i.e., faces, where a little distortion can be hugely disruptive) or removal (time for that embarassing uncle to disappear from the beach!). I can't convey the degree to which this feels like a revolution in image... sanctity, I guess. You gotta watch it.

(via Follow Me Here)

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