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.

Comments

FX Show Nip/Tuck said it best

[Anonymous Coward]

"Beauty is Symmetry, and you have none"

One of the main characters in the plastic surgery show Nip/Tuck made that comment. It seems as if TFA applies said comment.

I sent them a pic of my face to be touched up

[ProteusQ]

All I got back was an email that read "ROTFLMAO!"

Re:I sent them a pic of my face to be touched up

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

I tried it, and I got floating point error.
:O

So in summary

[mrbah]

Just add symmetry and make thinner.

Re:So in summary

[jacquesm]

that was exactly what I was going to write :) But the first guy sort of defeats that rule, he's actually a little broader in the face than the source image.

A simpler rule would be 'add symmetry', mirror the left half of the face (or the right half, flip a coin).

Adding a smile also goes a long way towards making people prettier, in fact a smile really is the best make-up.

Re:So in summary

[mobby_6kl]

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.

Re:So in summary

[grantek]

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

dating sites will love this

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Strange 3D photo pairs

[gznork26]

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/

Ghost of Clarke seen skulking nearby.

[Purity Of Essence]

The first two are meh-worthy, but the last one approaches magic-grade technology. Wow!

Re:Ghost of Clarke seen skulking nearby.

[mrbah]

Microsoft spends billions of dollars researching things like that, but never brings any of them to market. Look at the "Image Deblurring with Blurred/Noisy Image Pairs" paper -- it's a marketable, easy to use technology that would be of huge benefit to typical consumers, yet chances are good it will never be commercialized. Contrary to popular opinion Microsoft does innovate, it's just that all the good stuff gets killed by some committee full of assistant senior project project team manager manager mangers.

Wow. No, really, wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

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

real footage?

[apodyopsis]

the question is in twenty years time will you trust the news you see on TV?

when cheap, easy, video editing allows this then supposedly real footage: news, family videos, wedding snaps will lose all veracity.

after every girl wants to look good for her wedding...

and before somebody says "it will never happen" this is only a logical extension of red-eye removal.

Re:real footage?

[pembo13]

I get the feeling from you that you trust it now. I find this confusing myself. Considering that an apparently large portion of Slashdotters very much consider themselves rationalist who do not believe things without proper evidence, it seems weird to me that many simply believe what they see in the news. These past week (maybe 2) there were at least two cases circulating around the internet where it had been observed that CNN has used footage from one event, trying to pass it off as that of another event. And that's pretty low tech.

News reports should be only be as trusted as logic can be applied to the report.

Take for instance the recent story of a Russian sipper shooting at a reporter. A few questions came to my mind:

• What kind of sniper takes such a shot and misses?
• What kind of sniper misses, and doesn't take a second shot?
• How does one tell the affiliation of a sniper? Do they sign their bullets or something?

News stories should be treated as untested pieces of evidence -- in most cases at least. The advancement of technology will only make it more difficult to tell truth from fiction.

Re:real footage?

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of sniper takes a shot and misses?

The kind that isn't a formal and TV depicted sniper. The kind that isn't a sniper at all.

Rather just some goon soldier or citizen with any old rifle from a fair distance away. Just becouse the media calls it a sniper, doesn't make it so.

Re:real footage?

[rossz]

> What kind of sniper takes such a shot and misses?

No one is perfect. Long distance and wind variations can cause a miss.

> What kind of sniper misses, and doesn't take a second shot?

The smart sniper. There was no way a second shot would have hit. Everyone was moving around too much.

> How does one tell the affiliation of a sniper?

If they shoot at you, you can be sure it's the enemy. The sniper would have easily figured out which side the potential target was on.

> Do they sign their bullets or something?

Signing the bullet would have screwed up the ballistics. Snipers are extremely anal retentive when it comes to their rounds. They usually use hand loads and they buff the round to remove any imperfections.

FYI, a close friend was a sniper for SpecOps.

Lists of Siggraph (and other) papers

[Animaether]

I'd call this karmawhoring, but seeing as the editors didn't even bother linking to claimed list at 'waxy.org'... lists of Siggraph papers have been kept by Tim Rowley and Ke-Sen Huang for years. You can find this year's list at:
http://kesen.huang.googlepages.com/sig2008.html

And an overview of all years at:
http://kesen.huang.googlepages.com/

This also includes lists of papers presented at other events such as Eurographics.

For even more fun, visit the papers' authors sites; they often also publish papers at seemingly unrelated events that contain some interesting computer graphics gems.

Easy.

[NerveGas]

Making faces more attractive is easy. All you have to do to get a reasonable increase is to make them more symmetrical.

If you want yet another increase, there is a set of ratios for distances between features that uncannily applies to pretty much everyone who is widely considered attractive. Shift everything closer to those ratios, and you'll get a big improvement.

Want more? Fix skin blemishes.

Between the three of those, you can make incredible strides. I would highly encourage any interested to watch "The Human Face".

Digital beer goggles.

[Rufty]

Now she can look as good the morning after as she did the night before!

Complicated Software

[Joebert]

Once again someone's trying to write a bloated piece of software to overcharge for something our systems already do.

See the following example for how I was able to increase the attractiveness of an already attractive Hooters girl using only Microsoft Paint. (exported via Fireworks for filesize optimization)

http://img119.imageshack.us/img119/9474/hooters4si8.jpg