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PhotoSketch Image Manipulation Tool Taking the World by Storm

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the photoshop-forum-goofs-rejoice dept.

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."

6 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. Copyright implications by capt.Hij · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  2. The end of creativity by fluor2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:This sums it up quite nicely by NotBornYesterday · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    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.

    --
    I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
  4. Interesting point: This research is in China by MaraDNS · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Interesting point: This research is in China by PhysicsPhil · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Give the Chinese credit where it's due. Setting aside any arguments about how Americans don't value science and technology any more, to expect China not to produce good research is foolish. It is a large country that is putting resources into science and technology. Combined with the fact that stricter immigration laws make the United States a less desirable place for overseas students to study it's not a surprise. Based strictly on relative populations of China and America, we should be asking why the Chinese aren't producing even more groundbreaking work.

      Americans forget that one of the main reasons they were the top dog in science and technology was because most of the world's population was doing subsistence farming. The kids of those farmers are now becoming scientists and engineers, and there is real competition now.

  5. Re:This sums it up quite nicely by adonoman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.