Browsing Image Collections

Problem statement

Image thumbnails are commonly used for selecting images for display, sharing or printing. Current, standard thumbnails do not distinguish between high and low quality originals. Both sharp and blurry originals appear sharp in the thumbnails, and both clean and noisy originals appear clean in the thumbnails. This leads to errors and inefficiencies during image selection. In this research, we are using image analysis to generate thumbnails that better represent the quality of their original high resolution images.

We first build a standard thumbnail, then estimate a local blur using local measures from the the input image and the standard thumbnail (which we use as a high quality reference) and finally apply a space-varying Gaussian filter to the standard thumbnail. To add the noise component, we extract the residual (the noise component) from a denoiser, and subsample it, preserving the variance of the noise found in the high resolution original.

This work is applicable to image browsing on embedded, web-based and PC applications. These new thumbnails provide a quick, natural way for users to identify images of good quality, while allowing the viewer’s knowledge to select desired subject matter.

New thumbnail	Standard thumbnail
New thumbnail reflects local blur. View original by clicking here.
New thumbnail	Standard thumbnail
New thumbnail reflects image noise. View original by clicking here.

Further details, describing an algorithm that reflects the local blur and the noise of the originals, together with subjective evaluation of the results is found in HP labs technical report HPL-2007-88, found here .

Last Modified: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 09:11:36 -0700

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PathMarker: A System for Capturing Trips

It is difficult to organize collections of rich media. Memories of a trip are hard to relive and share without context. Current automatically generated slide shows are hard to follow because they lack location and time context. In this research, we built prototypes that we call PathMarker, that address these problems by augmenting rich media with automatic capture of path context.

Example screenshots from prototype 3D system on the left and prototype trip player application on the right. Click on the images above for larger versions.

Outline

Central to capturing a trip is knowing where you were, and when you were there. Combining continuous path data with media (Path-Enhanced Media or PEM) offers substantial advantages over the previous approach of tagging individual media with time and location. Accurate paths allow for the 1) automatic creation of an organized, rich media diary that helps people remember, enrich, share and relive past trips and helps them to plan for new trips; 2) embellishment of trips using third party stock media and non-media information; 3) the natural, automatically created presentation of trips; and 4) new kinds of media annotation, sharing, dissemination, search and organization.

By combining GPS path information with digital media, we have built prototype systems for gathering, editing, presenting and browsing PEM. We developed 1) a methodology for gathering PEM with off-the shelf hardware; 2) software for automatic conversion of the raw path data and media into an application independent XML representation; and 3) example PEM applications. A first application provides map-overlaid trip editing, presentation and browsing. A second application provides a 3D immersive environment with digital elevation maps for automatic trip flybys and for browsing. A third experiment involved generating an interactive DVD from path-enhanced media, resulting in a compelling presentation of a vacation trip.

Further details are found here

Last Modified: Wednesday, 07/18/2007 13:55:47 -0700

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