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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 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.