The content-aware image resizing technology that I mentioned last week is starting to be put to the test on the Web. Developer Patrick Swieskowski has created an interactive Flash-based demo that lets you scale an image horizontally or vertically. To prove that it’s not a canned/pre-processed implementation, the Flash UI lets you specify other images to process. (Here’s one I tried.) John Dowdell links to more good resources, including experiments and info from Henry Yee, Lee Felarca (another SWF-based demo), and Joa Elbert (including source code).
Where will all this lead? Hard to say, though it’s clearly touched nerves, good and bad. Some photogs are dispirited, though it makes me wonder where, and by whom, the line between acceptable & unacceptable manipulation is drawn ("Skies aren’t that black, Ansel"). Who gets to say that color gels & graduated ND filters are okay while digital resizing isn’t? Me, I welcome tools that help tell great stories.
Well, since the Dada-ists proved that you can’t trust a “photograph” in the early 1900s, no one should be surprised that this kinda trick is possible in the early 2000s.
Of course, it’s tackiness level will be much higher than in Dada times because so many more people have computers than had darkrooms back then.
It IS tacky but its fun-ness should keep it going.
Freeware Photoshop plug-in anyone ?
Or even better, since Shai Avidan has been hired, could we have this in Photoshop 10.5 ?
Right there under warp in transform, or in Filter/Distort (anywhere really, 11.0 is just too far away 🙂 )
I have nothing against image manipulation for artistic purposes. As you point out Ansel Adams’ classics are significant manipulations of reality. The irony of this Flash example is that the example chosen appears to be “Lone Cypress” on 17-Mile Drive, a supposedly copyrighted vista. 🙂
I wonder if a similar type of slicing could make images seamless.