Revolutionary resizing technique announced

[KillEmAll]

This is pretty dang cool. I expect to start seeing this become defacto on the web.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIFCV2spKtg

[Alex]

I saw that a week ago, wonder how long it will be before it hits the consumer market :ne_nau:

[Sombeech]

Wow, that's cool.

I've noticed this being done on some of my images "involuntarily" when I would resize them. I'd flip back and forth through the same image, and I'd notice certain columns missing.

Do you think this technology will be open source, or free?

[KillEmAll]

Hopefully it'll be free. There's reports that there is some sort of coordinated effort with Adobe, so I'm assuming we'll see it as an Adobe plugin only. I'm sure someone could come up with a similar plugin for GIMP or Paint.net, just won't be as efficient. What would be really cool and what I think would be revolutionary is if the web browser was the tool that was doing the resizing on the fly. Adobe is pretty good at making their viewers free to download so I'm sure we would see this do the same thing. The only gotcha is it would have to become a "standard" like flash or pdf so that most browsers would have the viewer and websites would be willing to post content this way.

One other possibility would be that the web server itself would pre-scale the image based on the device you are using. It wouldn't scale as you resized your browser window, but that also means it could send the image out as a jpg format that all browsers support. It'll be interesting to see how (and if) this all plays out.

[Cirrus2000]

Wow, that's some amazing technology. I wonder just how processor intensive it is, the way it searches for paths and averages, and all...

[stefan]

This is pretty dang cool. I expect to start seeing this become defacto on the web.

i agree it's cool.

i am not sure what you mean by de facto on the web, but why do you think this is useful for the web?

[CarpeyBiggs]

I don't get it. Why would you want your pictures to be manipulated in a non uniform manner? Seems weird to me... Wouldn't the image get distorted and what not?

[stefan]

I don't get it. Why would you want your pictures to be manipulated in a non uniform manner? Seems weird to me... Wouldn't the image get distorted and what not?


one reason, i imagine, would be to preserve dominant features of the image, rather than treat everything equally.

[KillEmAll]

This is pretty dang cool. I expect to start seeing this become defacto on the web.

i agree it's cool.

i am not sure what you mean by de facto on the web, but why do you think this is useful for the web?

When I say de facto I don't mean for image viewing. Jpeg already fills that space. I really just meant that it could be a common enough feature that essentially all browsers would support it. The reason it would be great for the web is because as a web developer, your images would display appropriately independant of the viewing platform. I wouldn't have to worry about if my image is being displayed on a cell phone or a desktop. This makes mobile content much easier to manage from the providers side.

[waltny]

I don't get it. Why would you want your pictures to be manipulated in a non uniform manner? Seems weird to me... Wouldn't the image get distorted and what not?

Im with you on this one....

[stefan]

I don't get it. Why would you want your pictures to be manipulated in a non uniform manner? Seems weird to me... Wouldn't the image get distorted and what not?

Im with you on this one....

well, here's one thing on it ...


Seam Carving for content-aware image resizing

This new method of image resizing looks for seams (not simple columns or rows) of pixels with the 'least energy' (least contrast / change in detail) both vertically and horizontally in the image and then uses this to enable resizing without losing important image content such as human subjects or other detail. This technique can be used for reducing and enlarging images as well as removing items from the image which are not wanted (by manually painting 'negative weight' over an area of the image). But less of my waffle just jump in and watch this video of the algorithm in use, I assure you it will make considerably more sense. (Purist photographers look away now).

[stefan]

When I say de facto I don't mean for image viewing. Jpeg already fills that space. I really just meant that it could be a common enough feature that essentially all browsers would support it.

by de facto do you mean modus operandi?



The reason it would be great for the web is because as a web developer, your images would display appropriately independant of the viewing platform. I wouldn't have to worry about if my image is being displayed on a cell phone or a desktop. This makes mobile content much easier to manage from the providers side.

i guess what i was wondering about is that, since many newer browsers have smoothing/resizing rendering features in them, what does this technique offer over others? i can see its use in editing, but when it comes to webpages, it's not clear that you want to scale an image nonuniformly (which this does), but rather render the image based on platform/medium/screen resolution whatever.

[waltny]

I don't get it. Why would you want your pictures to be manipulated in a non uniform manner? Seems weird to me... Wouldn't the image get distorted and what not?

Im with you on this one....

well, here's one thing on it ...


Seam Carving for content-aware image resizing

This new method of image resizing looks for seams (not simple columns or rows) of pixels with the 'least energy' (least contrast / change in detail) both vertically and horizontally in the image and then uses this to enable resizing without losing important image content such as human subjects or other detail. This technique can be used for reducing and enlarging images as well as removing items from the image which are not wanted (by manually painting 'negative weight' over an area of the image). But less of my waffle just jump in and watch this video of the algorithm in use, I assure you it will make considerably more sense. (Purist photographers look away now).

My problem with this is this, it is another instance of "computer knows" best....

[KillEmAll]

by de facto do you mean modus operandi?


Not sure why I have to explain this but, no, de facto really was what I meant altho modus operandi would fit just as well.

de facto [(di fak-toh, day fak-toh)]
Something generally accepted or agreed to without any formal decision in its favor



i guess what i was wondering about is that, since many newer browsers have smoothing/resizing rendering features in them, what does this technique offer over others? i can see its use in editing, but when it comes to webpages, it's not clear that you want to scale an image nonuniformly (which this does), but rather render the image based on platform/medium/screen resolution whatever.


If you think about from the perspective from different devices and the size of the window your viewing it from, I think this would be where it could be used most appropriately. I wouldn't use this if I wanted to maintain the original image, but with things like ad content it would be great if my image could scale without me having to worry about who (or what device) is viewing it. Will that actually happen, I don't know. Nor do I care since I'm not a web developer, and I don't have an iPhone.

[stefan]

by de facto do you mean modus operandi?


Not sure why I have to explain this but, no, de facto really was what I meant altho modus operandi would fit just as well.

de facto [(di fak-toh, day fak-toh)]
Something generally accepted or agreed to without any formal decision in its favor

okay, so the difference i was getting at is, were you thinking of it as one many modes of operation, perhaps that you could turn on or off at your leisure (since some folks don't like the thought of it) or that it should be the primary mode of operation. i got the feeling you were getting at the latter.

just asking, i haven't thought too much about this stuff and you seemed pretty excited about it.



If you think about from the perspective from different devices and the size of the window your viewing it from, I think this would be where it could be used most appropriately. I wouldn't use this if I wanted to maintain the original image, but with things like ad content it would be great if my image could scale without me having to worry about who (or what device) is viewing it. Will that actually happen, I don't know. Nor do I care since I'm not a web developer, and I don't have an iPhone.

okay, i think i need to understand it's benefits/detriments a little better.

[KillEmAll]

okay, so the difference i was getting at is, were you thinking of it as one many modes of operation, perhaps that you could turn on or off at your leisure (since some folks don't like the thought of it) or that it should be the primary mode of operation. i got the feeling you were getting at the latter.

Ah, gotcha. I really haven't thought that deeply about. I definitely don't think it would or should be used everywhere. It just doesn't seem appropriate. I certainly wouldn't want to see any of Carpey's or Richard's photos distorted in any way. But some things aren't as beautiful and really could be distorted as needed. I don't think this is an across the board kind of thing. As always, I think the content creator should have the ultimate control over how their work is viewed. You might even have legal issues if you did this across the board, modifying images that don't belong to you. I'm not a lawyer though, and Scott's probably so board with this thread by now he's stopped reading it hours ago.

[Sombeech]

I think there's a lot of debate on this technology. True, you wouldn't want your scenic award winning shots manipulated, but most photos on the web aren't of the outdoors. This breakthrough is geared towards PDAs and blackberry phones, for quick reference visuals.

Plus, I'll bet there'll be an option to right click on it and see the original file if you really wanted to.

I think it's great.

Another option, thinking of this forum, there are technologies out there that would let you upload your 3MB photo to a forum, and it would be resized for you and your viewers to the 800 X 600 size.