A Program Learns Oriental Ink Painting

mikejuk writes about a neat use of machine learning. From the article: "Using reinforcement learning to make a computer paint like an oriental Sumi-e artist isn't just a matter of shouting 'well done' — and yet, when you look at the results, that's what you want to do. ... Three researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have attempted to teach a computer how to do it [paint] using standard reinforcement learning. When the program used the brush to create a smooth stroke, it was rewarded. After it had learned to use the brush, it was set to rendering some photos and the results look very good."

Comments

Re:It only did the strokes, not the art

[Cow Jones]

Right. It would be interesting if we could use something like this to train Photoshop filters to get closer to the result we want...

On a side note, one of the example photo conversions on page 7 of the PDF (or here from the third link) has the i-programmer writer commenting "I can't help but think that the bird looks a lot like something from Angry Birds...". That's not an accident: the original source image is this photo of a red cardinal bird, which was photoshopped by DeviantArt user mohamedraoof to look like a "Natural Angry Bird". All three images, the original photo, the deviation, and the sumi-e version look very nice in their own way.