We can’t decide if this internet-based program — which uses a rudimentary sketch to magically source and create a corresponding photo — is the future or some sign of the apocalypse. Regardless, it’s one large victory for the Photoshop-challenged. (Cough, cough.) We’ll let Tao Chen, one of the creators, explain how it works.
“We present a system that composes a realistic picture from a simple freehand sketch annotated with text labels. The composed picture is generated by seamlessly stitching several photographs in agreement with the sketch and text labels; these are found by searching the Internet. 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. 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; we also evaluate our system using the results from two user studies.”
What do you think? And what’s the first thing you’d use it to find? [via Gizmodo]