PhotoSketch Image Manipulation Tool Taking the World by Storm 193
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."
Copyright implications (Score:5, Insightful)
The end of creativity (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:This sums it up quite nicely (Score:4, Insightful)
An event that will be remembered forever in the History of Humanity as the day in which a million dorks were finally able to put themselves in X-rated positions with Megan Fox.
Many with decent Photoshop skills already can, this just lets millions more into the club without the need for a little know-how.
.bmp, or .jpg, I just give it a "cool and fun, but not really useful". If this thing can output a .psd or .xcf with each element on a discrete layer, that would be excellent.
On a serious note, if this just outputs a flat
Hoax? (Score:3, Insightful)
This seems to be either a hoax or will be extremely limited in ways they aren't discussing, as to have little use. If the examples they are showing are real, the image data set they are pulling from must have been manually processed and adorned with hand-made metadata.
This falls too much into the "too good to be true" category for me to believe it.
Interesting point: This research is in China (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [harvardbusiness.org] about how America is destorying its own future.
Re:This sums it up quite nicely (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Let's download binaries from China! (Score:3, Insightful)
This looks really cool, so I downloaded the binaries. But I am going to try it out INSIDE a VM just in case.
Re:This sums it up quite nicely (Score:3, Insightful)
And a copyright release form. Or are snippets of other images non-infringing use?
In other words, it probably doesn't matter what the output format it, it will just be "cool and fun", but not for redistribution.
Re:Interesting point: This research is in China (Score:2, Insightful)
America's core competency used to be research and innovative application.
Unfortunately, copyright and patent laws intended to protect the small from the big ended up getting flipped around. Now those laws are used by the big to crush the small, and along with it all the innovation that might produce a hint of competition.
America's future is bleak indeed unless one of two things happen:
1. A tremendous amount of domestic-only jobs (such as commercial driving from one US location to another US location) are created
2. The United States abandons NAFTA and the WTO in favor of bi-lateral (one country to one country) trade agreements that are slanted in the favor the US.
There is also a snowball's chance in hell of:
3. Every other country in the world adopts standards higher than the United States, and makes the US the outsourcing destination of choice, because of our comparatively light regulation and cheap labor.
That is because they are with me... wait, who are (Score:3, Insightful)
That is because they are with me... wait, who are they?
You know your old when you don't regonize any of the names of today's hotties. And think they should cover up their bellies, do they want to catch a cold?
Good job slashdot btw, on holding out the sex comment so long.
Me, I thought of the porn possibilites when I read the first line.
Re:Interesting point: This research is in China (Score:4, Insightful)
Give the Chinese credit where it's due. Setting aside any arguments about how Americans don't value science and technology any more, to expect China not to produce good research is foolish. It is a large country that is putting resources into science and technology. Combined with the fact that stricter immigration laws make the United States a less desirable place for overseas students to study it's not a surprise. Based strictly on relative populations of China and America, we should be asking why the Chinese aren't producing even more groundbreaking work.
Americans forget that one of the main reasons they were the top dog in science and technology was because most of the world's population was doing subsistence farming. The kids of those farmers are now becoming scientists and engineers, and there is real competition now.
Re:Interesting point: This research is in China (Score:3, Insightful)
Not that I disagree about the US slipping in investing in basic research, but there are highly intelligent people in other countries, too. Innovation is not a zero-sum game.
Re:This sums it up quite nicely (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This sums it up quite nicely (Score:3, Insightful)
I just give it a "cool and fun, but not really useful"
I beg to differ. If the usage of this tool reaches high enough numbers, you will have a system in place for tagging a massive number of images with meta-data (both textual and symbolic), making image search MUCH more powerful. This system would get better with time, and would enhance other systems, if the collected data is utilized appropriately.
LS