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HP Restores Creased Photos With Flatbed Scanners
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists at HP have developed a technique to detect creases in photographs using standard, unmodified flatbed scanners. Once correctly scanned into a computer, software can determine where the photograph's defect is, and artificially correct it to remove any trace of a crease or fold. The result is a spotless JPEG scan from a creased photo, with absolutely no modified hardware and no technical know-how required on the part of the user." They're using multiple light sources to do this, in a way that reminds me of last year's description of 3D image creation using an ordinary digital camera.
A fold-less centerfold :)
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
I can tell by the pixels and stuff.
Won't this ruin my collection of photographs of creased paper?
In the article it says that they use an unmodified scanner, but later on they claim to control the lights of the scanner individually... how is this not modifing the hardware?
nothing worse than scanned centerfold porn. porn-wise, i mean. (:
THL phish sticks
I was hoping they were using that 3D information to do something interesting to actually restore the image. They're not.
They're basically using rudimentary 3D information that they can get out of the scanner to determine that a crease exists. They then remove it with a simple infill algorithm, which is as basic as it gets (although it often works ok), and which you can find in most image editing software. It's no coincidence that the example image they use has a crease going over mostly similarly colored and low-detail areas.
So what they're doing is not an improvement to restoration, it's just an improvement to defect detection. Basically, it saves you having to tell the software where the defect to be fixed is, the fixing is the same quality as it's always been.
--Joakim Ziegler
. . . found ONLY along the crease, then they can't interpolate what was there. Period. This is just an improved version of the various touch-up tools in Photoshop etc.
The rudimentary 3D info can be used for improving all sorts of scans.
How about...
- Flattening a scan of a book (by the spine)
- Focusing an area that's raised (products like Focus magic assume a section is all out of focus at the same level, whereas a map of the amount of lost focus is possible here).
- Using the above, scanning non-flat items.
- Scanning nearly-flat 3d surfaces.
Add a lens that can vary focus (based on the light differential) and you'd have a good 3D scanner for one side of a mostly-flat item, and a flatbed scanner that wouldn't lose focus on slightly-raised papers.
What we really need is a copy machine/scanner that can detect the valley formed by the spine of a book being copied and automatically correct for it. That would be worth it.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Applied Science Fiction was the first company to successfully market this as a 'dust and scratches' solution.
Same idea, taken to a new level. Now, I hope HP's management is smart enough to get out of the way and bring this to market. It should definitely sell a few more scanners.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
From the examples shown in the .PDF it seems that it is once again a case of a quick fix that only works on low-res and low detail photos, preferably in single color.
And for it to work at all, you would need a 2-lamp scanner.
Which are standard, but in high-quality print studios and other places that would do this kind of retouching by hand anyway in order to preserve or achieve better quality of the final product.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
...he said "crease."
Multiple light sources offer some interesting options. A few years ago, someone modified a digital camera (I think a Canon PowerShot) to have four flash sources instead of the usual one. The camera would take four pictures in quick succession, one with each flash. This allowed better edge detection.
It was useful for applications like taking a picture of complex, dirty machinery (as under a car hood) and locating the edges, even where everything was roughly the same shade. It also helped when photographing very shiny objects, where the reflection from the flash was a problem. With each reflection from each flash unit in a different place, all reflections could be removed.
It was too specialized to become mainstream, though. That seems to be the fate of 3D from 2D systems. Good ones have been built, but most have been either discontinued or turned into very expensive products for specialized use.
since it will restore the upskirt I took of Carly Fiorina that I accidentally creased.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
A spotless JPEG? :/
Make that the Unicorn tapestries
Repatently,
KT
[Types random keys] Enhance! [Types random keys] Enhance!
reconstructed the warped the Unicorn tapestries circa 2003.
Patently Yours, Kilgore Trout
We've been leafrolled!
What we need is software that will reproduce the effect of beer goggles. It'd come in handy updating photos of ex girlfriends after men have sobered up and come to their senses.
I don't have any creased photos that I need to restore, but I've got boxes of matte finish prints that are a pain to scan. I wonder if a similar technique couldn't be used to automatically remove the scanning artifacts (little regularly-spaced crescent moon shapes) from those.
Turn the picture around and re-scan, that way you effectively have the light coming from different angles by each scan. No need to modify the scanner.
Aw, c'mon, admit it: the crease was deliberate because you were trying to spare your eyes and sanity!
Do you suppose HP will be nice consumer-friendly guys and update their PrecisionScan software for previous scanner models? Nope: they'll roll this feature into software that'll only work with new scanners they wanna sell you. So, even though it doesn't REQUIRE new hardware, you can bet they'll figure out how to restrict it so that you still have to buy new hardware in order to use it.
Quoting a certain Francis Ford Coppola flick -- "I love the smell of (lawsuits) in the morning. You know, one time we had a (HP sued), (logging untold number of billable hours.) When it was all over, I (finally looked) up (the patent.) We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' (violation). The smell, you know that (sulfur) smell, the whole (office.) Smelled like... (heck.)"
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
.. would like to patent the concept of removing the creases from a newspaper by ironing it under a dry towel.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
The Spirit Datacine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_DataCine) has used diffuse light sources to "get around" scratches in film for YEARS.
The result is a spotless JPEG scan from a creased photo
I'm not sure if artifacts and compression are much better than just leaving the crease in the image...
Slashdot: Where opinions are just opinions until you have mod points.
Scientists invented the wheel too but I don't want to see it posted on Slashdot. Seriously, isn't this really old news? Removing creases in photos was one of the first things I remember everybody doing when scanners went mainstream sometime in the 80'.s
This does nothing to restore creased photographs. What it does is scan the photograph, manipulate the digital image obtained, so that you can print out the image onto another piece of paper. This is not restoring the photograph. The photograph still has a crease in it.
.mp3 files.
As a practitioner of traditional photography, I'm annoyed to no end by people who talk as if the concepts of "photograph" and "image" were one and the same. Photographs are unique physical objects that have mass. Speaking as if photographs are digital images is like speaking as if symphonies are
...and it suddenly dawns on everyone exactly why Archon V2.0 failed in his childhood dream to become a lyricist...
It's okay, we're getting to the part of the thread that doesn't have any words:
"Naah-naah-na-na-na-na, Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-na-na-na-na-na-naaa...."
Pervs who sit on scanners/photocopiers to get a picture of their naked butt-cheeks are going to be in for a surprise.
Finally, I can accomplish my lifelong dream of restoring the Zapruder film!
There are several tools, but they are using technique of analyzing colors and by this detecting borders on an item. It does not work with every image, more correctly it does not work with almost every image. It sometimes work if an item is, say, of even dark color on a white background.
We are always shooting the same items: bottles, boxes, cans, TV-sets, phone sets, etc. Maybe it is possible to use not only a border detection technique, which does not work, let us put it mildly, ideally, but include into the program basic shapes of items, so that borders of items recognized more accurately?
This innovation would save the eyesight to thousands of e-commerce photographers. I have to cut out an item from background about 100 - 200 times per shift. The only reliable way to do it is using the tool "Path" of GIMP, placing points of a path manually along the image border and then bending this path's line manually along the item border. Then making a selection from a path, feathering selection, inverting it, and finally cutting out the background.
...but Quick Mask is your friend. I used to muck about with the path tool (no end of frustration there), but being able to paint/erase the quick mask and switch back to selection has changed all of that. Use an automated selection tool to get your selection 90% of the way there, use quick mask to get the rest of the way...
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Which would explain the literal approach to the term "by hand"?*
Pray tell - how would one use a scanner (mentioned in the sentence above the one you quoted) in the "restoration by hand" that you envision?
As a work surface that you can put your brushes and chemicals on?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
A scientist is a person that practices science. Science is the business of knowing. The origins of the wheel do not predate "knowing" or the pursuit or investigation of new knowledge.
No, a scientist is someone who applies the scientific method. The scientific method had not been invented before the wheel was. Do you even know what science is? By your definition, I'm a scientist because I know the name of my next-door neighbor.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Sounds pretty cool. But it is by HP, so too bad it will be 3.5GB to download, which will unpack into a 12GB program that needs 2GB of RAM to run and uses up 50% of your paging file before it even starts processing an image, and will advise that you need to invest in your own 64TB SAN full of 15krpm SCSI disks to make it work properly. And will use custom form controls. That are black. And made in Flash.