SIGGRAPH 07: Seam Carving for Content-Aware Image Resizing

S. Avidan and A. Shamir
Seam Carving for Content-Based Image Retargeting
SIGGRAPH, San-Diego, 2007

Adobe's Avidan says that seam carving is fairly straightforward. If, for instance, a person wanted to compress a picture lengthwise by a single pixel, the software would scan the image to find the best pixels to remove. This is usually a zigzagging, vertical seam that is surrounded by pixels on the left and right that have a similar color. The pixel-wide seam is removed and the image is compressed without distorting the objects in the image. What makes the duo's algorithm impressive is that it can find and remove these pixels quickly, so a person can expand and compress a picture quickly. The process works well for photos with backgrounds such as sky or grass, in which there can be little variation in color and pattern, Avidan explains, although it works poorly for people's faces and more varied landscapes.

Video: Image Resizing by Seam Carving
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