JazzyMoon

This next video is about image retargeting. A little software is now available at http://www.thegedanken.com/retarget to test it.

This algorithm has been invented by two Israeli researchers and allows intelligent resizing of images. This technology, also called Seam carving or liquid resize, should be available soon as a plug-in for Photoshop, and maybe one day installed by default on browsers.

After trying it on a few images of www.eyecitysolutions.co.uk, my opinion is that this technology has some limitations:

• It is not possible to resize the image less than 70% of its original size. The image gets then too distorted.
• The image must not have straight lines or regular shapes like circles. Most of them become bowed and crooked.
• It doesn’t work when there are writings on the image, as the alignment of the characters is lost when retargeting.
• The protection mask, that allows protecting some areas lacks of precision. Often the areas around the protected mask are damaged when retargeting.

Excepted from these drawbacks of the current version of the algorithm, I think this technology has a great future and will be regularly embedded in softwares.

Resources:

• Flash Online seam carving implementation: http://rsizr.com
• Wikipedia article on Seam carving http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seam_Carving
• The website of Ariel Shamir, one of the authors of Seam carving: http://www.faculty.idc.ac.il/arik
• The software used to test the image retargeting: http://www.thegedanken.com/retarget

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