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Some Eye-Popping Research From Siggraph

Posted by kdawson on from the let's-face-it dept.

jamie found links to a discriminating selection of Siggraph papers at waxy.org. Among the more captivating: automatically improving the attractiveness of faces in portraits; automatic substitution of similar faces into photographs (with potential applications such as a privacy-enhanced Google Street View); and using still photographs to enhance video of a static scene.

13 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Uncanny Valley by sakdoctor · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Those altered faces are somewhere between Bunraku puppet and a prosthetic hand

  2. dating sites will love this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder how soon they will be offering the "attractiveness improvement" service to the photos of their subscribers. I don't think they have enough CPU power to improve mine, though.

    1. Re:dating sites will love this by Chemisor · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Who would want it? Surely, even butt-ugly people realize that eventually they'll have to meet their dates in person, and not being recognized is not going to be a desirable outcome. All those "more attractive" results look nothing like the original person. If I wanted to lie about my appearance, I'd sent a picture of Jean Claude Van Damme or something.

    2. Re:dating sites will love this by rtb61 · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Apparently CGI is already being used to do exactly that for a lot of the latest movies. Making the actors look better and creating more active facial expressions to make up for all the drug abuse, botox overdoses and plastic surgery, all of which really shows up in high definition. The 'beautiful' people turn out to be pretty dang ugly in person, where true personalities and appearance combine to create quite a different picture from the on screen illusion.

      With this kind of technology you will never want to leave home or look in a mirror lest you be exposed the ugly shock of reality ;).

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  3. Strange 3D photo pairs by gznork26 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I rotated the pairs of adjusted faces so they were left to right (and the faces were on their sides), and defocused my eyes as if I was looking at a 3D stereo pair of pictures to see what would happen. The slight differences made the portraits appear to me as if they had been photographed in 3D. The places that had been changed were subtly evident as a misalignment -- in the eyes of some, for example. I realize this is a fudged 3D effect, but might there be some use for it?

    ---
    I write pointed political and business short stories at http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/

    1. Re:Strange 3D photo pairs by LiquidFire_HK · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, any two similar pictures can get that effect if you focus on them as though they are one. I occasionally use it to cheat on "Find the 10 differences" puzzles, but I don't really see much more use for it. :)

  4. Wow. No, really, wow! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'll never trust an image or video ever again. Never. Ever. Make sure you watch the "enhance video of a static scene" clip.

  5. Re:So in summary by mobby_6kl · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I can see this tool becoming very popular with the Myspace crowd once they realize the limitations of the current "hold camera above head level" method.

  6. Re:So in summary by grantek · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Also notice the eyes dropped in most of the touched-up photos, and were rotated to sit horizontally - interesting to look at, I'd like to see what 'designer' plastic surgeons would have to say about that

  7. Beauty by KasperMeerts · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's all about the smile. The red-haired girl suddenly looks so much better when she's smiling.

    --
    As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.
  8. Re:So in summary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Or even better, if it's a woman, make them naked. I've found this makes them so pretty you don't even notice their face.

    So why is it that a naked face doesn't excite you? It's naked, after all.

  9. meh then wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    The first two with the faces...none of them looked right after being touched up. That's probably because our brains are really really good at processing faces. They looked wrong, and creepy in some way to me. Not impressed with the results at all.

    The static scene improvements with photo's though. Wow. Fooled my eyes everytime. It always looked better and when they started swapping out elements, hiding posts so you could see the flowers behind, fixing the shaky video was the only thing that looked at little off.

  10. Re:Easy. by NeMon'ess · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'd like to see the face beautification software applied to fifty of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood. I'd like to how much more beautiful they get, but also if some of them lose their unique look that makes them attractive to some.