Forum Moderators: not2easy
Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir present a new method of resizing images that helps achieve new aspect ratios. Without use of cropping or other conventional methods images are resized in seconds, losing only "negative" space and retaining what the whole of the image was capturing.
They also have developed off it's back the most amazing tool for removing center sections, seemingly seamless.
[youtube.com...]
It is definitely worth noting that Shai Avidan, one of the creators of this technique, has recently been hired by Adobe.
[news.com...]
Something I think that photographers should be very happy about is, instead of losing 30% of their work to cropping, they will maintain the "meat" of their vision and maybe lose 30% of the sky.
Very exciting to me. Could save us all hours and hours a day.
[edited by: tedster at 5:38 am (utc) on Oct. 17, 2007]
[edit reason] fix typo [/edit]
I've read some upset by photographic professionals that this is just one more tool that can" destroy their art". What rubbish. They sound like musicians who complained about sampling technology. They should just get over it - the same way painters had to adapt when photography hit the world.
This is sweet stuff, and I hope Adobe can find a way to integrate this functionality into CS, or at least offer it as a stand-alone application.
My huge yard is now tiny...
This is really cool, but really useless in my opinion!
This is really cool, but really useless in my opinion!
Then you have never had to make 600 x 200 banner ad from a 1200 X 1800 photo
<edit>I've just been using the GIMP plugin linked to above. Very easy, very fast, and very impressive.</edit>
[edited by: vincevincevince at 1:59 am (utc) on Oct. 17, 2007]
Some years ago, Nat Geo had some trouble over shifting a pyramid so a photo of (three) pyramids fit the cover. Maybe took time and effort; this new technique to make it easy.
Seen couple of photos from China, from years back, where a government guy who fell from favour vanished in later version: but still a gap.
More than ever, "seeing is believing" to be untrue with images. Various transformations won't be restricted to Photoshop smarty pants.
In time, who knows. Maybe as step from this, pretty simple to add to photos.
Then you have never had to make 600 x 200 banner ad from a 1200 X 1800 photo
That is a true statement.
However, I prefer text ads anyway!
It is an interesting technique, but I don't see its relevance to Web sites, as the plugin is not built into browsers. IMNSHO, It would really only be good for backgrounds.
IMNSHO, It would really only be good for backgrounds.
Boy - real estate agents will love this one
No kidding. This could make a box kitchen or bedroom look very spacious.
[...] I don't see its relevance to Web sites
Eh? It's simple. If I have a 300x250 space on my page for a photograph (ie. 6:5 ratio) and my digital photo is 4:3 ratio (as most digital photos would be) and there are some vital details in the photo at the far top left corner and the far bottom right corner... this software means I don't have to crop and compromise.
If you use the Gimp there is a Plugin...
I wasn't using Gimp before - but I am now! Thanks very much for the information.
This is really cool, but really useless in my opinion!
All the glitzy object enhancement aside, the most amazing contribution this will have for graphics is the ordinary enlargement from a small image to a proportionately larger one without pixelating. Instead of interpolation, a more complex algorithm that comprehensively redistributes pixels, this is a major breakthrough. This has been the bane of rasterized graphics since the beginning, resolution dependence. If this works the way it appears to, it changes everything - an amazing development.
the most amazing contribution this will have for graphics is the ordinary enlargement from a small image to a larger one without pixelating.
I've never had trouble with pixelation using bi-cubic resizing. However you end up with a very soft image. There's already software for that which has been around for quite a while, it's a photoshop plug-in called genuine fractals. Basically it preserves the edges and sharpness of contrasting color.
IMNSHO, It would really only be good for backgrounds.
Backgrounds don't do very well with this, you need something with defined features.
I was thinking a photo background that is made very faint, and resized to fit the window.
One of the examples they gave would make photographers freak out. This was the one that made an Appalachian bump into a Rocky Mountain High.
Tried it via the Gimp plugin and it doesn't work very well for photos with straight lines (such as houses), as the straight lines become rather jagged and visibly distorted.
I'm going to carry on experimenting with various types of images, but at first glance, while it keeps all the vital elements of a photo, the result is quite clearly a manipulated image.
Pro Photographers would be aghast if you did this to their photos.
I wouldn't be surprised if pros end up using it a lot. In a photo portfolio you always have the problem of thumbnails that are small enough to show many on the page, yet still give some idea what the subject is. Sometimes cropping works. Sometimes scaling works. Often neither works, and this could fill that gap. I bet once this becomes part of CS4 and LR3, pros begin to use it on their own photos frequently to show teaser images, and then properly scale the higher res versions.
doesn't work very well for photos with straight lines
Gimp is great, and I've already worked through a couple of folders worth of images using the liquid scaling plug-in. Nice to have photos a uniform size.
