
This Is a Photoshop and It Blew My Mind - Photosketch - AjJi
http://gizmodo.com/5374890/this-is-a-photoshop-and-it-blew-my-mind
======
anigbrowl
Sigh...third time today and I only got one karma point for pointing it first.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=862216> if you feel sympathetic :)

EDIT: gee guys, the smiley should tell you this ^ is not a serious complaint.
I thought people might actually be interested in reading the actual paper v,
since project page link has been inaccessible. Sheesh.

Site is down but this is the Siggraph paper:
[http://www.ece.nus.edu.sg/stfpage/eletp/Papers/sigasia09_pho...](http://www.ece.nus.edu.sg/stfpage/eletp/Papers/sigasia09_photosketch.pdf)

I have downloaded the binaries (also requires openCV1.1, recently updated
OpenCV2.0 doesn't work) and have made some progress, though it's very clunky
and the instructions are, um...lacking.
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/opencvlibrary/files/>
<http://opencv.willowgarage.com/wiki/>

~~~
hyperbovine
In today's hypercompetitive world, branding is key. Compare:

"Photorealistic image composition from simple sketches"

    
    
                 vs.

"This Is a Photoshop and It Blew My Mind - Photosketch"

Which one would _you_ rather click on?

~~~
anigbrowl
The former, obviously. This is why I can't have nice things :-D

------
wmf
The obligatory shark attacking a helicopter is a nice touch. This technology
has epic potential in the LOLcat market.

------
chime
I'm having a very hard time believing that this is real. If it is, they have
just made breakthroughs in multiple domains in computer graphics, recognition,
and composition at the same time. Here's hoping it's real.

~~~
NickM
My guess is that it's real, but that it doesn't usually work as well as the
example images provided. If it really works for any kind of input sketch, then
how come there are so many images of dogs catching frisbees and bears catching
fish?

~~~
JacobAldridge
Yup. When I see a real-time demonstration showing a bear catching a frisbee
(probably, but not definitely, while jumping out of a shark-threatened
helicopter), then I'll believe it.

Edit: I'll also believe it if anyone on this site claims to have seen same.

------
jonhohle
Ariel Shamir (4th author listed in the paper) also worked on Seam Carving
(<http://www.seamcarving.com/>) and Improved Seam Carving
(<http://www.shaiavidan.org/papers/vidretLowRes.pdf>), two widely publicized
papers from the past two years.

------
mseebach
Hey, this is the technology from Wag The Dog.

De Niros character is a Hollywood producer, hired to produce a fake war in
Albania to distract from a sex scandal before an election. At one point, he's
directing news footage by shouting something like "there's a girl in front of
a village, it's on fire .. hmm, no, more smoke.. her hair is too light. Can
she have a cat? Show me cats" while having a technician type in the request
and watching the result appear in real time.

~~~
cwg
Ha, true. FWIW, though, the character you're describing is played by Dustin
Hoffman. Awesome movie, though.

~~~
mseebach
Yeah, you're right. I think the quotes page on IMDB has the names backwards,
or I'm really in need of re-watching that film.

------
jf
A link to the original research paper that works:
<http://cg.cs.tsinghua.edu.cn/montage/main.htm>

------
ErrantX
This is going to make the copyright brigade go into apoplexy if it starts to
become popular!

------
harisenbon
The probability of mis-matched images seems like it would be incredibly high,
but if they manage to pull this off, it would be amazing.

However, I wonder about this technology being used for evil (custom porn). =/

~~~
hyperbovine
Wait, custom porn is evil? I guess I'm the only one who's tired of all this
cookie-cutter porn.

~~~
JacobAldridge
So glad the downvote maxes at -4

|-----------|.......................................

|..............|Bear...................................

|..............|.........|-------------|...............

|..............|.........|-------------|Fish...........

|-----------|................................|--------|

....................................Yo Mom|--------|

~~~
growt
Box for 'Yo Mom' needs to be bigger! ;)

------
thomasfl
If this could be extended to movies, the possibilities would be awesome. Just
write a script for a movie, sketch out the different scenes and voila, a ready
made rough of your new romantic comedy!

The program could be extended further to recycle old movies, and to replace
the actors heads with new one.

I have to start writing a business plan for this right away. Please send me a
message if you want to join in on this.

~~~
anigbrowl
In all seriousness, that's part of why I find it so interesting. The software
works (I use the term loosely!) on downloaded images, ie it doesn't yet
include a web client that does an image search for you.

So for movie purposes, you could save a _lot_ of time using a (more polished)
version of this to prepare your storyboards - shoot pictures of your selected
or desirable actors, background plates that look like your desired locations,
and major props. Draw stupid sketches and _voila_ , you have rough
photoboards. In conjunction with some other imaging technologies, it has
massive possibilities. There's a saying that a film (especially a low budget
one) lives or dies in pre-production; the more decisions you can make before
you begin shooting, the less expensive the production process is and the more
predictable and cheaper your post-production will be. Sure, quite a lot of
Great Art happens on the spur of the moment, but serendipity is rare while
dithering is common, and expensive. Adobe, for one, is pushing strongly to
bring the use of their tools forward in the production process, so that the
film is sketched out before shooting takes place and directors can spend more
of their time 'filling in the blanks'.

What you mention (going from this to an actual movie) is obviously not
practical now, but I'm happy to say that it's being reduced to an engineering
problem - the fundamental technology to do most of what you describe already
exists, and it's a matter of making it usable and timely. I will venture a
guess that we'll be able to do this in clunky/very expensive form by 2015, and
by 2020 it will be possible to make an entire feature film this way that looks
about as good as a mid-90s low-budget sci-fi film - say, _Escape from LA_ \-
at home.

tl;dr although this has been presented as an entertaining toy, with
thematically-organized material there's a _lot_ of near-term commercial
potential.

------
qd
Did anyone get a chance to try it before their site went down so we can hear
some first hand accounts?

------
ABrandt
Alright I may have a tendency to be overly excited about new technologies, but
this is seriously amazing. The possibilities (and problems) that arise from
this application are vast. This could completely revolutionize the stock
photography industry and web design in general.

Copyright and privacy issues are my greatest concern though. For example,
could you imagine seeing yourself as a digital model on some corporate website
--doing something you never actually did. That is a scary thought in my
opinion. I wonder if you could input your own pictures into the system and
have it perform the same procedure though (I loathe the pen tool).

~~~
stcredzero
Sounds like hyperbole, but this technology has the potential to change the way
people use language and speak and think.

Ever notice how many Americans use "like" as a preamble to a reenactment of a
scene from a TV show, or an event, or even an abstracted, generalized
occurrence? "It was like..." then on to the enactment. People wouldn't speak
like this if it wasn't for ubiquitous video entertainment.

In David Brin's Uplift trilogy, uplifted sentient dolphins sometimes "spoke"
to each other by mimicking echolocation returns and beaming pictures and
scenes directly into each other's heads. If software like this gets good
enough to compose scenes for us on the fly, it will drastically alter the way
we speak, just as television did.

~~~
gnaritas
People wouldn't speak like this if it weren't for California girls in the
80's.

~~~
anigbrowl
That's not just a California thing, actually. Growing up in 1970s Ireland, the
word was sprinkled liberally throughout our sentences, like. You may like this
exploration of metaphor as a fundamental part of consciousness (if so, do
follow up and read the mentioned book):
[http://www.therebel.org/opinion/health/the_thing_to_be_descr...](http://www.therebel.org/opinion/health/the_thing_to_be_described_2009092455185/)

------
rooshdi
Wow, this is revolutionary. Anything that can use sophisticated technology to
actually make things simpler for the end-user, instead of the other way
around, is definitely a plus. I want to try this thing out right now.

------
akrymski
If this is for real, then why can't the same thing be done for music? Drum a
beat, whistle a tune, sing a few notes - and let the software extract best-
matching samples from a library of millions of songs.

------
yosho
I don't get how this is going to replace photoshop.

The images will not look as good, or as clean as a regular photoshopped image,
I doubt that automated image editing is that advanced right now.

The examples they gave, is probably the best that was available, I bet on
average, the results don't look nearly as good or clean.

But hey, I could be wrong.

~~~
uiohnuipb
Good enough for display on TV news or a newspaper ?

Get me a picture of the president, put a girl in a red dress in his eye-line.
Get me a picture of evil dictator - add some WMD in the background.

At the moment you need an intern to do this be much better when you can do it
yourself.

------
hussong
Gotta love the random deer in picture 5.

------
jrockway
I really want to try this, but the actual site seems to be down now.

------
nikcub
boring. i have been able to do this in emacs for over 10 years now

------
gorm
That picture with the weeding, the sunset, the sailboat and the birds is so
unnatrual that it makes my soul twist.

~~~
cubicle67
ah, nothing better than a bit of weeding at sunset

------
blogimus
Images aren't from flickr, not enough cats.

