This algorithm is incredible!
It does everything I have wanted an image editor to be able to do, and more, completely intuitively.
I will let the links explain.
YouTube video (showing enlarging and shrinking, as well as an incredible object removal technique)Lots of links (and a nice example image). Particularly nice is that there is indeed a free plugin for GIMP, and a plugin for Photoshop.
Saw that. Doesn't work on all images, but it's pretty neat.
Glad I didn't try to make an app that does it when I read about it though, being that someone already made those gimp and photoshop plugins to do it.
I decided not to make such an app cause I figured that, as impressive as it is, it would be of limited use to people.
That's pretty nice, being able to scale without distorting. It's basically multiple small scale operations on parts of the image separately.
the video looks pretty neat -- however, the photoshop plugin is currently a pale imitation of what's happening in the video... Supposedly a couple of major updates are planned in the future though, so time will tell. :-?
It only works on *some* images tho, try a full-zoomed picture of a human's face for instance.. :P
It only works on *some* images tho, try a full-zoomed picture of a human's face for instance.. :P
the photoshop plugin will keep selected portions of the image un-affected, so you can select your 'must-have' components before running the filter. :-?
And which selections of a full human head would you like to preserve? :P
It also has some trouble when there is a lot of energy right beside the edge of another object. For example, [a http://www.flickr.com/photos/90361640@N00/282104656]this Zen garden picture[/a], when resized horizontally without any other tweaking, gets really funny looking rocks.
One thing that I am quite impressed by with this algorithm is scaling upwards. Edges get kind of weird, but the surface details stay surprisingly sharp.
Scaling down sure beats cropping in a lot of cases. It's fun how this lets me cram stuff into a single frame, without sacrificing much detail. (Although, in some cases, destroying all the details anyway).
It isn't aesthetically pleasing everywhere, but it is another very neat tool on the shelf. Used tastefully - particularly with larger scale nature scenes - it can have great results. Really depends on the image and the job.
Edit:
MARK! Fix my link.
Unfortunately the photoshop demo plugin only works up to 640x480, so kind of hard to test on large scenes. :-?
This is cool.
You don't need photoshop to try this. You can get a free standalone program here:
http://www.thegedanken.com/retarget/default.asp?lnk=2