Some Eye-Popping Research From Siggraph
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.
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.
I'll never trust an image or video ever again. Never. Ever. Make sure you watch the "enhance video of a static scene" clip.
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.
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