TechRevu Review

Sketch2Photo: Internet Image Montage by Tao Chen, Ming-Ming Cheng, Ping Tan, Ariel Shamir, Shi-Min Hu
Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University; National University of Singapore News ISBN/ITEM#: CM091109PSBTPS
Date: 09 November 2009

Links: Sketch2Photo: Project Page /

Sketch2Photo is a project created by a group of University Students in China that takes a user's crude sketch and scours the web for images that it can use to generate a fairly seamless photo-composition. We're not sure whether to be thrilled or terrified, but it's impressive, no matter which way you jump.

Caveat: We've only seen the video, and as far as we know it hasn't been tested in the wild, so how robust it is remains to be seen. The concept is sound though, so we expect it will eventually be more than a good idea. The source code is available for download to those who can't wait.

From release/information:

Sketch2Photo: Internet Image Montage from Tao Chen on Vimeo.

Abstract: We present a system that composes a realistic picture from a simple freehand sketch annotated with text labels. The composed picture is generated by seamlessly stitching several photographs in agreement with the sketch and text labels; these are found by searching the Internet. Although online image search generates many inappropriate results, our system is able to automatically select suitable photographs to generate a high quality composition, using a filtering scheme to exclude undesirable images. We also provide a novel image blending algorithm to allow seamless image composition. Each blending result is given a numeric score, allowing us to find an optimal combination of discovered images. Experimental results show the method is very successful; we also evaluate our system using the results from two user studies.

(Source: Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University; National University of Singapore)

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