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Pixel Inventor Goes Back To the Drawing Board
lawpoop writes "Russell Kirsch, inventor of the square pixel, goes back to the drawing board. In the 1950s, he was part of a team that developed the square pixel. '"Squares was the logical thing to do," Kirsch says. "Of course, the logical thing was not the only possibility but we used squares. It was something very foolish that everyone in the world has been suffering from ever since.' Now retired and living in Portland, Oregon, Kirsch recently set out to make amends. Inspired by the mosaic builders of antiquity who constructed scenes of stunning detail with bits of tile, Kirsch has written a program that turns the chunky, clunky squares of a digital image into a smoother picture made of variably shaped pixels.'"
Somebody addressed this problem a long time ago, I see it on CSI every week.
RTFA.
Whale
Why are we suffering from it since so ?
I did not read the article, so I don't know if it's answered there.
+1 blatant
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
Jeebus needed a single-pixel transparent GIF to do the walking on water miracle.
Here's a relevant article about it: http://alvyray.com/memos/6_pixel.pdf
In a word? Jaggies
crazy dynamite monkey
Why are we suffering from it since so ?
I did not read the article, so I don't know if it's answered there.
It is now apparent that for a comparable amount of information stored, a more complex algorithm (with maybe even N passes required) could be employed to produce better results to the human eye. To me, this article seems to miss the beauty of keeping it simple and going with the square. I would also bet that all of his examples are done by starting out on a square based pixel image. How would one scan an image in one pass with his new suggested method? This might become a better standard but I would wager it would make a lot of things computationally more expensive and displaying the images more complex. Not to mention manipulation of the image gets a bit trickier and probably throws a monkey wrench in a lot of our widely implemented compression technologies that already produce this sort of "creative blocks" of multiple pixels.
I'm not an expert in this field and I find his further research neat and mildly innovative but I would bet that when it comes down to weighing the practicality of implementation that squares remain.
My work here is dung.
He just "invented" JPEG too!
Exactly. Besides, you have to have some kind of regular pixel on a physical display, so it has to be some geometric shape that meshes well with itself: squares, rectangles, triangles, or hexagons. Squares are the easiest. To overcome the blockiness, you just have to decrease the pixel size enough, and increase its density enough, so that the human eye can't perceive the individual pixels. Modern displays have pretty much achieved this.
It sounds like this guy's trying to invent variable-size pixels, but that doesn't make sense. Sure, you could come up with algorithms for dealing with them efficiently, but making a physical display that shows variable-size pixels is anything but trivial, and pointless since we can already make square pixels so small.
Now who wants to write a rasterizer for non-rectangular pixels
From the article: The pixels are still square; they're just cut into two pieces along a line through the pixel, and each piece has a color. (It sort of reminds me of S3TC.) The edge of a polygon would have one piece for the front and one for the back, and any other points along it would have one piece for each of two texture samples.
From what I could tell, his solution to square pixels is smaller square pixels in certain arrangements... oh, that and not calling them smaller pixels.
Jeebus!! Invented the pixel. I'll be damned. :-P
That's nothing. What about the guy back in the 40s that invented the color blue!
No, no... They didn't have color in the 1940s. Just look at the movies from back then...
Bow-ties are cool.
I would never have known that the Japanese have blurry genitals.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
"Why are we suffering from it since so ?
I did not read the article, so.."
You couldn't have read it with your square pixel screen, anyway.
This sounds like the ongoing debate between analog and digital audio. Everyone likes using images like these during the debate, but given enough resolution (bits), the closer the digital audio will be to its original analogue (electrical) source.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Actually, you jest, but I remember the first time I saw footage from WWII that was in colour and being stunned, because it was so vivid.
And, then there was the Russian guy who created colour photos in 1909 using techniques he created himself.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
But those are pretty easy to solve. The most complete solution is simply to increase display resolution past what the eye can perceive. Have small enough pixels, no jaggies can be seen. We are working towards that bandwidth of the interconnects and cost being the only hurdles, and those are going away slowly. As a quite effective stopgap, anti-aliasing can be applied. It is very easy to do on modern GPUs for little cost.
Now, take a variable size, variable geometry pixel grid. Tell me how your process that, how you store it in memory, how you rasterize images to it. Sound like some complex problems? They are, very complex. So solve all that, and in such a way computers can process it in realtime with cheap hardware (if it is even possible). Then you get to tackle the REAL hard part: Building a physical display that can display said pixels.
So, you can do all this, which I am unconvinced is possible, OR, we can simply work on making displays with more pixels. Get displays up in the 300-400PPI region and none of this is a problem anymore. While that will take more bandwidth than our current interconnects provide, engineering higher bandwidth interconnects is a well understood problem and there are a number of solutions (such as simply running more channels in parallel). It will also require working on ways to bring the cost of high density displays down but again, we've had a great deal of success with that. LCDs went from VGAish resolutions that were quite expensive and small to massive HD displays in about a decade.
To me, it seems like we have the solution to the problem. This new solution sounds far, far more complex and likely impossible.
Pixel was probably loosely used in the article. The link talks about image formats and how they use square pixels; not the physical pixels on display devices - which are rectangular generally.
Working in the web division of a semi-fine jewelry retailer.
graphic artist: Do you know computers?
me: I should hope so. Do you have a question?
graphic artist: Yes. It's with Photoshop.
me: Ok, I might be able to help. What's the problem?
graphic artist: Ok, let me zoom in here. You see what I have here? (zoomed in so that the pixels were big blocks on the screen.) Everything is really blocky.
me: Understandable at this view level.
graphic artist: Well, it's not working for me. I need to be able to get a smaller shape in here but it's all too blocky.
me: Let me get this straight. You want to get a shape in the image smaller than a pixel?
graphic artist: *beaming* Exactly! How do I do that?
me: I'll look into it. *slowly edged away*
And she was getting paid three times what I was. Things like this make me want to lock myself in the server room, trip the halon and wait for the blackness to take me.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Most of the great artists were mad.
Anti-aliassing is essentially a form of blurring.
You eliminate jaggies at the cost of sharpness.
Using non-square pixels is an interresting (although perhaps not practical) way of tackling this issue.
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1) A pixel isn't "invented" by anyone. A pixel is just a concept that is so straightforward, like the wheel, language and adding numbers. It's not a question of which single person "invented" it. It's just a question of, once the technology is there, it WILL be used, no matter what.
2) What kind of screen are you going to use for that? Each pixel can have different types of pixel sizes so no screen could fit that. A square grid is the most uniform division of 2D space into units.
3) If this would have been about hexagonal pixels, I'd have found this cool.
4) At best, this is a new compression scheme for storing pictures - but certainly not a way to display them (see 2))
5) Non square pixels are not a new idea, see for example sensors of cameras.
From "A Brief History of the Pixel":
There's much more, but it suffices to say that Russell Kirsch is only a minor footnote in terms of the history of the pixel. He may have invented something, but it wasn't square pixels. No doubt, someone colored in blocks on a sheet of graph paper to make an image before pixels were ever used in conjunction with an electronic device. And using square pixels on a computer connected raster scanned display is just common sense, not an invention - it makes the math simpler.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Would someone tell me how this happened? We were the fucking vanguard of displays in this country. The Sycraft-fu Mach3 was the display to own. Then the other guy came out with a 300 Pixel Per Inch display. Were we scared? Hell, no. Because we hit back with a little thing called the Mach3Turbo. That's 300 PPI and an aloe strip. For moisture. But you know what happened next? Shut up, I'm telling you what happened--the bastards went to 400 PPI. Now we're standing around with our cocks in our hands, selling 300 PPI and a strip. Moisture or no, suddenly we're the chumps. Well, fuck it. We're going to 500 Pixels Per Inch.
Sure, we could go to 400 PPI next, like the competition. That seems like the logical thing to do. After all, three worked out pretty well, and four is the next number after three. So let's play it safe. Let's make a thicker aloe strip and call it the Mach3SuperTurbo. Why innovate when we can follow? Oh, I know why: Because we're a business, that's why!
You think it's crazy? It is crazy. But I don't give a shit. From now on, we're the ones who have the edge in the PPI game. Are they the best a man can get? Fuck, no. Sycraft-fu is the best a man can get.
What part of this don't you understand? If 200 PPI is good, and 300 PPI is better, obviously 500 PPI would make us the best fucking display that ever existed. Comprende? We didn't claw our way to the top of the display game by clinging to the 200 PPI industry standard. We got here by taking chances. Well, 500 PPI is the biggest chance of all.
Here's the report from Engineering. Someone put it in the bathroom: I want to wipe my ass with it. They don't tell me what to invent--I tell them. And I'm telling them to stick 200 more PPI in there. I don't care how. Make the Pixels so thin they're invisible. Put some on the stand. I don't care if they have to cram the 500th pixel in diagonally to the other four hundred, just do it!
blatant as it may be, I read the article three times now - and Soilworker, you did well not to bother. I'm pretty sure the answer is not in there.
This doesn't seem to be about square pixels in terms of display technology (where hexagonal pixels may indeed be superior).
It also doesn't seem to be about picture acquisition.
On the face of it, it seems to be talking about mapping rudimentary shapes to pixels so that they conform to a most-likely contrast-matching scenario with regard to surrounding pixels. Which some other posters here already pointed out with posts about JPEG and the like - but it's not really comparable to that either. Not in technique and not in performance.
At best, as far as I can take away from it, it could be a different way to display an image when zoomed in / a technique that could be used when enlarging an image to provide greater apparent detail (although you wouldn't want to enlarge it - you'd want to store the masks found with the original image for display).
The results in the news blurb look pretty decent and if nothing else 'different' from other 'smart scaling' methods, so it's worth exploring. But what this has to do with square pixels as we're mostly familiar with them, I have no idea.
Now, about those hexagonal display pixels...
The current problem is that on an LCD display, the Red, Green, and Blue pixels are adjacent to each other, not co-located. Coming up with a scheme to make all 3 colors appear to emanate from the exact same point would be a useful development.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Nope, he's just described a limited form of the commonly used image (and video) compression technique known as a Macroblock.
Actually, you jest, but I remember the first time I saw footage from WWII that was in colour and being stunned, because it was so vivid.
And, then there was the Russian guy who created colour photos in 1909 using techniques he created himself.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Nonsense!
I looked at the embedded exif data of the pictures on the site you link to.
The images are from early 2010.
Many image-enhancement techniques exist that do just this, and this is not really new. In fact this proves that square pixels work just fine to transmit the information, but the image can be enhanced to a larger resolution by non-linear techniques that work better than simple [traditional] upsampling.
Help! I am a self-aware entity trapped in an abstract function!
Bravo,
my favorite C&H ever.
Yeah, but that was hand tinting, which was (mostly) more like painting.
The Russian guy actually did it with light filters and three separate images. Way ahead of his time.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
First, here's the actual paper, since it clarifies what exactly he's suggesting and doesn't seem to be linked anywhere in the article.
It's not a suggestion that we start using non-square pixels for displays or cameras or scanners or what not, though he's certainly not being very clear about anything and the reporting on this is just making matters worse. What the paper proposes is a method where:
1) The image is split into 6x6 blocks
2) For each block, you go over the four rotations of the two following two-section masks:
The triangular mask:
ABBBBB
AABBBB
AAABBB
AAAABB
AAAAAB
AAAAAA
The rectangular(ish) mask:
BBBBBB
BBBBBB
BBBAAA
AAAAAA
AAAAAA
AAAAAA
for a total of eight effective masks, and average the values under each section, resulting in two values, A and B.
3) For the mask and rotation that has the largest difference between A and B, you output the mask, the rotation, and the A and B values, resulting in 19 bits from a 6x6 (288 bits) block.
Though he talks of non-square pixels and whatnot, it's really just a compression algorithm. A really stupid one. Basically it's a bad variation of vector quantization, with lots of baffling details. Why 6x6 blocks? Why those specific masks? Why are you maximizing contrast instead of minimizing error like any sane person would do, WHY? There's no rationale given for any of these choices, not theoretical, not empirical, not even subjective.
The same sort of rigor extends to his comparison, where he compares his compression algorithm to, instead of, say, another compression algorithm, the image apparently simply downscaled and then scaled back up. And not even with a halfway decent resampling algorithm, but with nearest neighbour. Not to mention that the "non-square pixels" version has 2.375 times as many bits to work with. If he'd done a comparison to a reasonably modern compression algorithm like JPEG, the results would be much less favorable to him.
tl;dr Some old guy put together his My First Compression Algorithm kit and it's being treated like a revolution in graphics by ignorant reporters. Nothing to see here, move along.
Who says a display has to be raster-based? The market did. If you knew your history, you wouldn't ask that question.
Pixel was completely misused in the article. He's working an image scaling algorithm for photos. That isn't saying that it's not noteworthy, interesting or important; it looks like it works great and I'm not aware of anything that produces results that good on photos. There is the Hqx family of filters, but those were designed for emulators and aren't meant to be used with more than 256 colors.
The algorithm he created looks a lot like HQX which is used mostly to scale old video games. His algorithm seems generalized to work on high-color images while the HQX algorithms expect something closer to 16-color or 256-color images. HQX probably deals with dithering better.
The whole thing about "square pixels" is just the media angle.
I'm surprised you've never seen "The Color of War" on History Channel or PBS. Anyway youtube has lots of footage. And oh yeah, they didn't use video. It was film
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I mean Wizard of Oz came out in the 1930s...
True. And you'll notice that all of the parts of the story that were filmed on Earth are in black and white. It's only after Dorothy drops through the wormhole and they start filming the parallel world called the Land of Oz that the film shows color.
Calvin's dad explained it all.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
(1) If you make the pixels sufficiently small, nobody will notice they are square or triangle or whatever because people won't be able to see anything but a bight point of light.
(2) Not all pixels are square.
Those used for TV-compatible computers like Atari 800, Commodore=64, or Amiga used rectangular pixels (more tall than wide) because of the analog NTSC standard (which doesn't use pixels at all but is approximately 704x486 analog resolution). These computers produce rectangular output to be consistent with that. DVDs also use non-square pixels for the same reason.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
There are plenty of screens in consumer devices this very day that only give an effective pixel measurement. Many times they are actually made up of tiny dots or rectangles layered offset from each other. A cluster of 3 or 4 different colored dots could be considered 1 pixel. The commonly used method of sub pixel rendering for font smoothing uses this sub structure of a pixel to produce a better edge.
If this guy's format of storing color information takes off, we could use the data within his files to create a better image across the substructure of a screen. I don't see what the problem is. With the proper software, photographs could be rendered better on almost any modern LCD by using the substructure of a screen pixel combined with his variably shaped pixel format.
The improvement may not be all that great, but new screen technologies are using effective pixel measurements more and more. We could see benefits on todays technology and lay the software ground work for display manufacturers to stop cramming their technology into some square box which can only ever be an effective measurement.
Now, that isn't exactly how it works in every system, but the basics are there and the best algorithms for the task are also presented. In case you didn't click, or don't care to read the whole thing here are the basics:
So you see, it isn't blurring at all! It's taking more samples, and increasing the accuracy of the image relative to what is being sampled, where it is necessary.
As I said, this isn't the algorithm that everything uses, some do it for every single pixel, but the end result is about the same except in extreme corner cases.
md5sum
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
As I understand it, he proposes a system where each pixel (meaning in the image format, not on the physical display) can be subdivided in two areas, with different possible shapes (two rectangles on top of each other, two rectangles next to each other, two triangles) and different sizes of the two shapes. The best way to subdivide is decided for each pixel, in a way that maximizes the contrast between the two areas.
Or something like that; the text doesn't make it very clear.
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They'd probably be better overall than square pixels (as they'd be more uniform, whereas square pixels look great for straight vertical and horizontal lines, but look terrible for lines that don't match the layout of the pixels) after anti-aliasing.
However, fabricating LCD panels with hexagonal pixels would probably be a pain.
*golf clap*
I drank what? -- Socrates
Okay. Minus five points from the "graphic artist" for not knowing how to resample the image. Plus one point for trying to improve her knowledge instead of suffering in silence.
Minus one point from you for not knowing something that's not directly in your field.
Minus ten points from you for not even trying to help.
Minus fifteen more points from you for being a jerkass about it on Slashdot.
So she's down four, and you're down twenty-six.
Actually, anti-aliasing is nothing like blurring. True anti-aliasing is actually a projection of a higher sample rate to a lower one by combining more than one sample within the area of a single sample at the lower sample rate. While not as accurate as the higher resolution image, it is significantly more accurate than simply selecting one sample from each area. Blurring would be taking selecting one sample within the area of a single sample at the lower rate, and then averaging neighboring samples, which means you actually end up with less information than the un-blurred un-anti-aliased image.
My $50 eyeClops projector seems to have hexagonal pixels. It seems to be incredibly bad for fonts... but the projector itself is so bad at everything it does that it's hard to tell which of its many failings is most to blame.
Blurry, hexagonal pixels are also not optimal for structured light experiments.