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PhotoSketch Image Manipulation Tool Taking the World by Storm
PhotoSketch, a new image manipulation program that combines stick-figure sketches, internet image search and pattern matching, seems to be spreading like wildfire. Created by five Chinese students at Tsinghua University and the National University of Singapore, the tool takes a basic sketch and simple labels and turns it into a polished image. "Although online image search generates many inappropriate results, our system is able to automatically select suitable photographs to generate a high quality composition, using a filtering scheme to exclude undesirable images," say the PhotoSketch team in an abstract outlining the tool. "We also provide a novel image blending algorithm to allow seamless image composition. Each blending result is given a numeric score, allowing us to find an optimal combination of discovered images. Experimental results show the method is very successful."
In related news anyone supporting current copyright laws have reinvigorated the economy after having to go out and purchase new pants. Cue the next great debate about copyright as we continue to try to shoe horn old ideas into the new world.
Soon I can write a story and then I just compile it and it will show sniplets of existing movies or rendered characters and woha it's converted to a real movie even with end credits: Directed and written by ME ME
Oh I can't wait.
An event that will be remembered forever in the History of Humanity as the day in which a million dorks were finally able to put themselves in X-rated positions with Megan Fox.
Many with decent Photoshop skills already can, this just lets millions more into the club without the need for a little know-how.
.bmp, or .jpg, I just give it a "cool and fun, but not really useful". If this thing can output a .psd or .xcf with each element on a discrete layer, that would be excellent.
On a serious note, if this just outputs a flat
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
This seems to be either a hoax or will be extremely limited in ways they aren't discussing, as to have little use. If the examples they are showing are real, the image data set they are pulling from must have been manually processed and adorned with hand-made metadata.
This falls too much into the "too good to be true" category for me to believe it.
An interesting point: This research is being done in China, not the United States. Whatever happened to basic research being done in the US? Today's PARC laboratory is not in the US, but appears is in China.
This is not a good thing for people who live in the US. America's increasing dependence on outsourcing is destroying the US' capability to be competitive in today's environment.
The Harvard Business Review has an excellent article about how America is destorying its own future.
MaraDNS is an open-source DNS server.
Well, this being a research project / proof of concept type of thing, it's probably going to be bought up by a larger company (Microsoft, Google, Adobe) and made into a more useful bit of software. The actual output of this app is irrelevant - even if they composite the images into a flat image, at some point in time they've isolated the components and getting those components into different layers of some other image format is really a trivial extension. The important parts are really pulling useful images off the internet, and pulling together the important parts of those images.
This looks really cool, so I downloaded the binaries. But I am going to try it out INSIDE a VM just in case.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
On a serious note, if this just outputs a flat .bmp, or .jpg, I just give it a "cool and fun, but not really useful". If this thing can output a .psd or .xcf with each element on a discrete layer, that would be excellent.
And a copyright release form. Or are snippets of other images non-infringing use?
In other words, it probably doesn't matter what the output format it, it will just be "cool and fun", but not for redistribution.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
That is because they are with me... wait, who are they?
You know your old when you don't regonize any of the names of today's hotties. And think they should cover up their bellies, do they want to catch a cold?
Good job slashdot btw, on holding out the sex comment so long.
Me, I thought of the porn possibilites when I read the first line.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
But, dude, it's a mashup. You know that thing where if I take somebody else's work and put it on my TwitterBook, it's not plagiarism, it's an edgy new form of art that shows how brilliant and creative I am?
... and then they built the supercollider.
I just give it a "cool and fun, but not really useful"
I beg to differ. If the usage of this tool reaches high enough numbers, you will have a system in place for tagging a massive number of images with meta-data (both textual and symbolic), making image search MUCH more powerful. This system would get better with time, and would enhance other systems, if the collected data is utilized appropriately.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie