

Editing Photographs in Three Dimensions - scapbi
https://experiment.com/projects/editing-photographs-in-three-dimensions

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zo1
9 hours to figure out the 3 dimensional rotation of the chair?? Wow, I don't
think that solution is the path to go down. Why not allow the user to put down
some sort of control points to narrow down the search space? You know, it's
okay to ask the user for help sometimes.

*Edit: The reason it took 9 hours is because they rendered the model in every single possible camera position and orientation until they found one that matched.

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Apofis
Another problem,is that they need to have a 3D model ready of whatever it is
you're trying to manipulate. Have a slightly different chair or different car
make? Tough cookies.

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therobot24
Cool research but something bothers me about students/professors asking for
money on sites like indiegogo/kickstarter/etc.

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mistercow
Looks like that's the whole point of this site. Why does crowdfunding science
bother you?

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gioele
> Why does crowdfunding science bother you?

There is already a fair crowdfunding scheme for science called "taxes".

I feel the increase of popularity of crowdfunding schemes for science or
health care is detrimental to the cause. They will never be able to approach
the same level of funding that a state can give away, yet they will be a good
excuse for the politics to reduce the amount of money spent on these issues:
"The crowdfunding schemes are already taking care of it, aren't they? Why
should we waste taxpayers' money? If prof. X wants its experiment to be funded
why doesn't it ask for money on indiegogo?"

For those who may thing "nobody is going to ever suggest that", well, the
current government of UK as been elected exactly on this promise:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Society](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Society)

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dnautics
You should consider the proposition that funding science with taxes is a great
excuse to politicize science. Moreover, the notion that science funding could
ever be objectively "fair" is complete hokum, and the idea that a political
apparatus could find a particularly fair solution is even crazier.

Of course, I have to disclaim that I ran a successful science crowdfunding
campaign ([http://pledge.indysci.org](http://pledge.indysci.org)). As to why
it couldn't be funded by taxes, it's because the NIH coordinator for the
subsection working in the division that would have funded it used to lead the
project I'm continuing so there's a conflict of interest.

Now, this is a relatively 'boring' and particularly coincidental reason for
the inability for taxpayers to be able to fund this project. Usually the real
reasons are internecine conflicts within sciences competing for funds,
personal differences, political connections, etc. Consider for example the
case of Leo Paquette, who denied funding to a group and then turned around and
stole the idea for himself. (ScienceWeek. 1998-03-20) Of course the system
came to a settlement whereby Paquette got a slap on the wrist (agreed to not
accept funding for 2 years) instead of kicking him out.

My personal opinion is that if people want to say they fXing love science,
then they should be willing to reach into their wallets and pay for it
themselves. Science has a clear social benefit and to that end, everyone
should want to help out. Forcing other people to pay to make you feel like you
have chipped in yourself - is just patting yourself on your own back for
making zero personal sacrifice.

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Joeboy
Unless I'm missing something, for this to be useful, at least to normal
people, there would seem to be a huge step missing whereby every object in the
world has to be modelled and put in a database. Also you'd have to be able to
locate your 2d objects in the 3d database, but that is at least theoretically
tractable I guess.

Edit: It sounds cool, but maybe a bit misleadingly advertised.

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rayalez
I think that 3D scanners would be a perfect solution to this. It becomes
easier and easier to digitize real world objects, even based on a single-
camera video.

[http://youtu.be/gu5Ywwb4RaU](http://youtu.be/gu5Ywwb4RaU)

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Joeboy
That stuff looks cool, and I want to play with photogrammetry stuff when I
have some spare time. I think it's a bit optimistic to say it's a "solution"
to this though. It's another tool that can help with the modelling +
positioning + texturing + lighting + rendering + compositing workflow, but I
don't think we're anywhere near a "3D photo editing tool" that can be used by
normal people.

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marknadal
This is amazing technology, I'm excited for it to actually come to photo
editing/manipulation. Sometimes I wish the programming world and academic
world intersected more to solve problems.

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Joeboy
You can already do it. Use content aware fill to cover your object, then find
a 3D model of your object and composite it over the top. Afaict this is
intended to streamline that process a bit, but it's basically something you
can already do, eg using Gimp + Resynthesizer and Blender.

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etiam
Cool application. I don't see much justification for double precision
arithmetic in this case though, so why would they need the Teslas? Going with
Titan Z cards instead I believe they'd come out with comparable single
precision performance in the ballpark of half the price? That might be closer
to what could be reasonably expected in the target workstation too...

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taion
It's also a bit weird because NVIDIA are usually pretty generous in giving out
free K40s to academics. Wonder why they couldn't get some from NVIDIA.

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Alupis
Very interesting project!

I'm just curious about her degrees. It seems she achieved both a B.S. and M.S.
at the same time from the same university. How is that possible/allowed? The
schools around me don't even accept people into their masters programs until
after you have completed a B.S. and have some relevant work experience as
well.

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dragonwriter
Some schools have combined B.S./M.S. programs.

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Alupis
Oh man, I'm at the wrong University then!

No but really, I think it's more beneficial for a student to take a year or
two off after completing their BS and work in their field. The experience you
pick up in the workplace actually doing the thing you went to school for is
invaluable. That is unless you worked in your field prior-to or while you were
attending university.

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zo1
Some universities, such as the one I went to, have degrees that combine some
normal B.Sc degrees with honors. Such that after completing it, you can start
with your masters.

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orbifold
Hm, I would imagine a university like Carnegie Mellon had plenty of money, or
that they could use some centralised computing resource to do the work.

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imaginenore
I don't believe 90% of the examples in that video. They perfectly fill the
gaps left by the object every single time, including the person's fingerprint,
the carpet pattern, the patterns on the road.

I call BS.

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Joeboy
The paper says:

""" We compute a mask for the object pixels, and use this mask to inpaint the
background using the PatchMatch algorithm [Barnes et al. 2009]. For complex
backgrounds, the user may touch up the background image after inpainting. """

So they're not really claiming perfect object removal is part of their thing.
What they are actually doing is quite interesting, but their pitch is making
some rather extravagant claims IMO.

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imaginenore
Go ahead and try it. No algorithm will fill in the details like that.

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Joeboy
I am not disagreeing with you.

