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Comments: 135 +-   Some Eye-Popping Research From Siggraph on Saturday August 16 2008, @04:18PM

Posted by kdawson on Saturday August 16 2008, @04:18PM
from the let's-face-it dept.
graphics
software
jamie found links to a discriminating selection of Siggraph papers at waxy.org. Among the more captivating: automatically improving the attractiveness of faces in portraits; automatic substitution of similar faces into photographs (with potential applications such as a privacy-enhanced Google Street View); and using still photographs to enhance video of a static scene.
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  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 16 2008, @04:24PM (#24629185)

    "Beauty is Symmetry, and you have none"

    One of the main characters in the plastic surgery show Nip/Tuck made that comment. It seems as if TFA applies said comment.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      "Beauty is Symmetry, and you have none"

      One of the main characters in the plastic surgery show Nip/Tuck made that comment. It seems as if TFA applies said comment.

      I found the beautification piece interesting, and yes, symmetry and proportion are very important. Bigger girls that are still in the right wast-hip ratio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waist-hip_ratio) are perceived as attractive, and the same goes for other body parts. The research in the article focuses on face symmetry, and some of the subtle

  • All I got back was an email that read "ROTFLMAO!"

  • So in summary (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mrbah (844007) on Saturday August 16 2008, @04:26PM (#24629199)
    Just add symmetry and make thinner.
    • Re:So in summary (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jacquesm (154384) <j.ww@com> on Saturday August 16 2008, @04:29PM (#24629221) Homepage

      that was exactly what I was going to write :) But the first guy sort of defeats that rule, he's actually a little broader in the face than the source image.

      A simpler rule would be 'add symmetry', mirror the left half of the face (or the right half, flip a coin).

      Adding a smile also goes a long way towards making people prettier, in fact a smile really is the best make-up.

      • Re:So in summary (Score:5, Interesting)

        by mobby_6kl (668092) on Saturday August 16 2008, @04:47PM (#24629367)

        I can see this tool becoming very popular with the Myspace crowd once they realize the limitations of the current "hold camera above head level" method [officialda...source.com].

      • Re:So in summary (Score:5, Interesting)

        by grantek (979387) on Saturday August 16 2008, @04:56PM (#24629441)
        Also notice the eyes dropped in most of the touched-up photos, and were rotated to sit horizontally - interesting to look at, I'd like to see what 'designer' plastic surgeons would have to say about that
      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        Careful inspection reveals that the woman's lips have been broadened, also.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The algorithm seems to be highly dependant on gender. For example women aren't allowed to have a broad chin, men aren't allowed to have a narrow chin. So what it does is enforce gender stereotypes, which is probably what the majority base their perception of beauty upon. Sad but true.

    • Well something like that, if you made it too thin it would also be ugly, there is some median symmetry, which if you deviate from (too large/too small) you get ugly. There is some statistical ideal each part of the face can have before it deviates too much.

      Just like too fat vs too thin (i.e. starving kid in africa vs a fat person).

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      Not add symmetry.

      Follow the golden rule.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 16 2008, @04:28PM (#24629209)

    I wonder how soon they will be offering the "attractiveness improvement" service to the photos of their subscribers. I don't think they have enough CPU power to improve mine, though.

    • Why the hell would I need their services at all? I always just send a picture of Fabio like normal people do.

    • I'm holding out for the portable version but I suppose that won't arrive without some serious improvements in holographic projection tech.
      For the reverse process (to make other people look more attractive), I've developed my own tech. I call it Beneficial Ephemeral Eye Reticulation googles. Basically, a pair of B.E.E.R. Googles make even the attendees of a Linux kernel hacking conference look aesthetically acceptable. If only I could make the effect a lasting one...
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      Who would want it? Surely, even butt-ugly people realize that eventually they'll have to meet their dates in person, and not being recognized is not going to be a desirable outcome. All those "more attractive" results look nothing like the original person. If I wanted to lie about my appearance, I'd sent a picture of Jean Claude Van Damme or something.

      • If it's a subtle tweak to Look Better it could be quite important. First impressions and all that. When they meet you in person, okay, maybe you don't look *quite* as good, but the chance that they'll realize it's due to digital manipulation is basically zero - and, honestly, getting the other party to meet you in person is half the battle.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      Apparently CGI is already being used to do exactly that for a lot of the latest movies. Making the actors look better and creating more active facial expressions to make up for all the drug abuse, botox overdoses and plastic surgery, all of which really shows up in high definition. The 'beautiful' people turn out to be pretty dang ugly in person, where true personalities and appearance combine to create quite a different picture from the on screen illusion.

      With this kind of technology you will never want

  • by gznork26 (1195943) <gznork26@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Saturday August 16 2008, @04:33PM (#24629243) Homepage

    I rotated the pairs of adjusted faces so they were left to right (and the faces were on their sides), and defocused my eyes as if I was looking at a 3D stereo pair of pictures to see what would happen. The slight differences made the portraits appear to me as if they had been photographed in 3D. The places that had been changed were subtly evident as a misalignment -- in the eyes of some, for example. I realize this is a fudged 3D effect, but might there be some use for it?

    ---
    I write pointed political and business short stories at http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/ [wordpress.com]

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      Well, any two similar pictures can get that effect if you focus on them as though they are one. I occasionally use it to cheat on "Find the 10 differences" puzzles, but I don't really see much more use for it. :)

      • Back when I was having problems with epilepsy, my doctor sent me to an eye clinic to train my eyes to work together better. This training involved numerous exercises working with those magic 3D pictures and polarized glasses. There was one thing on the computer where you could see a bird with one eye on the screen, and a box with the other eye. You then had to get the box around the bird (It would chirp at you when you got it.)

  • by Purity Of Essence (1007601) on Saturday August 16 2008, @04:34PM (#24629255)

    The first two are meh-worthy, but the last one approaches magic-grade technology. Wow!

    • by mrbah (844007) on Saturday August 16 2008, @05:13PM (#24629585)
      Microsoft spends billions of dollars researching things like that [microsoft.com], but never brings any of them to market. Look at the "Image Deblurring with Blurred/Noisy Image Pairs" paper -- it's a marketable, easy to use technology that would be of huge benefit to typical consumers, yet chances are good it will never be commercialized. Contrary to popular opinion Microsoft does innovate, it's just that all the good stuff gets killed by some committee full of assistant senior project project team manager manager mangers.
      • Thanks for posting that. I try to pay very close attention to Siggraph, I'm not sure how I missed that paper. Fascinating stuff.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        -- it's a marketable, easy to use technology that would be of huge benefit to typical consumers, yet chances are good it will never be commercialized.

        I've noticed that a lot of SIGGRAPH papers will either only work for a small subset of inputs you would want to feed it or need a properly controlled environment to work and might need a lot of tweaking to get looking correctly. In my opinion, SIGGRAPH papers depend on demonstrating excellent best cases while mainstream consumer products require that the worst case be also acceptable.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      Now if they integrated all this tech with a camcorder, everyone could have a device with video recording capabilities several times that of current HD recorders.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 16 2008, @04:36PM (#24629269)
    I'll never trust an image or video ever again. Never. Ever. Make sure you watch the "enhance video of a static scene" clip.
      • You can say that again, the first two seemed like little more then an image warper combined with a facial recognition system. But that enhanced video one just about had me shitting myself with the things they managed to pull off.

  • real footage? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by apodyopsis (1048476) on Saturday August 16 2008, @04:44PM (#24629329)
    the question is in twenty years time will you trust the news you see on TV?

    when cheap, easy, video editing allows this then supposedly real footage: news, family videos, wedding snaps will lose all veracity.

    after every girl wants to look good for her wedding...

    and before somebody says "it will never happen" this is only a logical extension of red-eye removal.
    • Re:real footage? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pembo13 (770295) on Saturday August 16 2008, @04:57PM (#24629451) Homepage

      I get the feeling from you that you trust it now. I find this confusing myself. Considering that an apparently large portion of Slashdotters very much consider themselves rationalist who do not believe things without proper evidence, it seems weird to me that many simply believe what they see in the news. These past week (maybe 2) there were at least two cases circulating around the internet where it had been observed that CNN has used footage from one event, trying to pass it off as that of another event. And that's pretty low tech.

      News reports should be only be as trusted as logic can be applied to the report.

      Take for instance the recent story of a Russian sipper shooting at a reporter. A few questions came to my mind:

      • What kind of sniper takes such a shot and misses?
      • What kind of sniper misses, and doesn't take a second shot?
      • How does one tell the affiliation of a sniper? Do they sign their bullets or something?

      News stories should be treated as untested pieces of evidence -- in most cases at least. The advancement of technology will only make it more difficult to tell truth from fiction.

      • Re:real footage? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 16 2008, @06:15PM (#24630089)

        What kind of sniper takes a shot and misses?

        The kind that isn't a formal and TV depicted sniper. The kind that isn't a sniper at all.

        Rather just some goon soldier or citizen with any old rifle from a fair distance away. Just becouse the media calls it a sniper, doesn't make it so.

      • What kind of sniper misses, and doesn't take a second shot?

        Umm, the kind that had only one bullet? :)

      • Re:real footage? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by rossz (67331) <ogreNO@SPAMgeekbiker.net> on Saturday August 16 2008, @06:48PM (#24630333) Homepage Journal

        > What kind of sniper takes such a shot and misses?

        No one is perfect. Long distance and wind variations can cause a miss.

        > What kind of sniper misses, and doesn't take a second shot?

        The smart sniper. There was no way a second shot would have hit. Everyone was moving around too much.

        > How does one tell the affiliation of a sniper?

        If they shoot at you, you can be sure it's the enemy. The sniper would have easily figured out which side the potential target was on.

        > Do they sign their bullets or something?

        Signing the bullet would have screwed up the ballistics. Snipers are extremely anal retentive when it comes to their rounds. They usually use hand loads and they buff the round to remove any imperfections.

        FYI, a close friend was a sniper for SpecOps.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      the question is in twenty years time will you trust the news you see on TV?

      You trust it now? Are you new here?

  • by Animaether (411575) on Saturday August 16 2008, @04:45PM (#24629343) Journal

    I'd call this karmawhoring, but seeing as the editors didn't even bother linking to claimed list at 'waxy.org'... lists of Siggraph papers have been kept by Tim Rowley and Ke-Sen Huang for years. You can find this year's list at:
    http://kesen.huang.googlepages.com/sig2008.html [googlepages.com]

    And an overview of all years at:
    http://kesen.huang.googlepages.com/ [googlepages.com]

    This also includes lists of papers presented at other events such as Eurographics.

    For even more fun, visit the papers' authors sites; they often also publish papers at seemingly unrelated events that contain some interesting computer graphics gems.

  • by HeavensBlade23 (946140) on Saturday August 16 2008, @04:59PM (#24629469)
    This will save porn companies a bundle...
    • This will save porn companies a bundle...

      Actually, no. Or at least not yet... The skills etc involved in making the image manips look good are still far more expensive than the skills of porn performers. (well, most anyway)

  • It's all about the smile. The red-haired girl suddenly looks so much better when she's smiling.
  • ... was digitally removed from the video.

    In fact, it managed to get so different that got titled Clone Wars.Now you know why the president is so different in real life from what you see in TV.
  • that last link with the video was amazing. I hope it makes it into a commercial (or open source) product and isn't just some research that gets abandoned. Hopefully canon or adobe or someone will buy the technology.
    I'm still waiting to be able to buy a plenoptic camera [slashdot.org]
  • Seems to me they could take this a step further and implement a sort of convolution matrix, but instead of modifying neighboring pixels, they'd be making subtle modifications to facial features.

  • We took this spectacularly attractive blonde chick and wrote software that "automatically" turned her neutral facial expression (or slight scowl) into a smile. While we were at it we improved the symmetry of her face. Now she's gorgeous! We're brilliant!

    But that's not all. We also took this African American guy and automatically plugged in a different African American guy's face that had the exact same pose. We're Gods I tell you!

  • I could not decide, which versions looked better. I only recognized that they ere mostly non that good looking on both fotos.

    Then I looked closer, because I know a bit about the methods behind it. And they did some big errors, like copying the one side of a face to the other, when the face did not look perfectly straight into the camera. This gave some weird results. Some faces even looked quite unnatural (especially, but not solely the focus on huge foreheads.

    P.S.: I'm happy that I now since the last month

  • Easy. (Score:5, Informative)

    by NerveGas (168686) on Saturday August 16 2008, @07:10PM (#24630439)

    Making faces more attractive is easy. All you have to do to get a reasonable increase is to make them more symmetrical.

    If you want yet another increase, there is a set of ratios for distances between features that uncannily applies to pretty much everyone who is widely considered attractive. Shift everything closer to those ratios, and you'll get a big improvement.

    Want more? Fix skin blemishes.

    Between the three of those, you can make incredible strides. I would highly encourage any interested to watch "The Human Face".

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      I'd like to see the face beautification software applied to fifty of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood. I'd like to how much more beautiful they get, but also if some of them lose their unique look that makes them attractive to some.

  • by Rufty (37223) on Saturday August 16 2008, @07:11PM (#24630449) Homepage

    Now she can look as good the morning after as she did the night before!

  • Video does lie now.

    Can video ever be trusted again where evidence is concerned?

  • by Joebert (946227) on Sunday August 17 2008, @01:58AM (#24632603) Homepage
    Once again someone's trying to write a bloated piece of software to overcharge for something our systems already do.

    See the following example for how I was able to increase the attractiveness of an already attractive Hooters girl using only Microsoft Paint. (exported via Fireworks for filesize optimization)

    http://img119.imageshack.us/img119/9474/hooters4si8.jpg [imageshack.us]
Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature.