Posted by Patrick Chen | 0 comments
Sketch2Photo: Turning doodling into pictures since 2009
For all those people out there who may be a little artistically challenged, for those people who rely on stick figures for drawing, or for those who may just be a little lazy, Sketch2Photo is a godsend. Sketch2Photo can take some simple stick figure sketches and transform these into a photographic montage. The program, built by five Chinese students at Tsinghua University and the National University of Singapore, uses a vast library, including Flickr, to find the images. The process is simple:
- Draw outlines and sketches of whatever it is you want in your picture
- Label each item as well as the background. You can also precise what the item is doing (e.g. “Horse run”)
- Sketch2Photo will scour the internet to find matching pictures and combine them to create an image.
However, what is truly amazing about this software is the incredible image recognition technology as well as the blending algorithm used. It automatically compares images against each other to find which is best in terms of lighting, placement and angle. Where you would expect a crudely assembled photo superimposition, you actually get an image that seems to blend. Of course, there is no comparison to what can be done on Photoshop, but for the vast majority of people this can be a viable alternative and a decidedly quicker one.
“A system that composes a realistic picture from a simple freehand sketch 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,” says the Sketch2Photo architects in an abstract outlining the program. “Although online image search generates many inappropriate results, our system is able to automatically select suitable photographs to exclude undesirable images. We also provide a novel image blending algorithm to allow seamless image composition.”
I can already hear the critics deriding it for being too simplistic and having no value in producing something of quality. However, it would be too hasty to dismiss Sketch2Photo as simply a tool to allow geek’s to play out their fantasy by superimposing themselves in compromising positions with Megan Fox. No one is suggesting this tool is perfected or even ready to be released to the public, but the potential behind such a technology is immense. In fact, the site hosting the program crashed shortly after its release due to the influx of interest and it is still impossible to download the program.
It’s still early, the product is not even available to download, and with what we know, it may not even have a use, but I cannot help but think this is one of the more innovative and cool releases (yet to be released) out there. If all it is destined to do is to create funny images and to fulfill geeky dreams, then so be it.
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