Photocollage System

1. Photocollage System

2. What is Photocollage? • Photographic approach in combining multiple images to create a new whole • Result is an expressive composition containing multiple views of the same subject matter that forces the viewer to re-adjust his/her viewpoint as each individual image is examined

3. Paris by David Hockney

4. Portrait of the Artist’s Mother by David Hockney

5. Woman with Cigarette by Joyce Neimanas

6. Motivation • Traditional methods require considerable amount of time to manually fit photographs into place • Certain images may not be what the artist wants (may require artist to re-photograph) • Trial and error process can be frustrating and time consuming

7. Project Overview • Interactive, computer-assisted framework for creating a composite image in the style of a photocollage given one of more photographs • Engage user interactively through a simple, user friendly graphical interface • Provide specialized tools for creating photocollage, but flexible enough for multiple purposes

8. Related Work Automatic Panoramic Image Merging • Create panoramas from series of photographs • Apply projective transformation to make seamless overlapping of images • Non-interactive

9. Related Work The STAMP Collage • Spatio-Temporal Association with Multiple Photographs • Interactive exploration of 3-D space using photography • Combines pictures of various scale through transformation of images • Collage consists of key photo in center and the photos linked to it placed at the transformed positions

10. Related Work The STAMP Collage • Create STAMP collage using the STAMP editing tool allowing users to pick out photos and create links between common areas • Usability tests conducted on fine art and engineering students

11. Related Work The STAMP Collage

12. Related Work Adobe Photoshop • Standard image-editing application that can be used to create photocollages • Tools for manipulating images like rectangular marquee and transforming, but doesn’t provide immediate results (requires a lot of intermediate stages) • Time consuming & burdensome

13. Related Work • Scaling images require holding down <Shift> to prevent distortion • Can make layer contents invisible without moving or deleting them • Can link layer sets to move layer contents together simultaneously Adobe Photoshop Evaluation • Lack in visual cues needed for collages • Changing stacking order of layers is bothersome (drag layer in Layers Palette or go into series of menus) • Transforming images require going into menu options to select command

14. User Tasks: Overview • Load image(s) into application workspace • Browse through collection of images • Automatic generation of photocollage • User-driven creation of compositions • Specify shape of final composition

15. Photocollage Framework • Process begins with loading a set of source images in one window (scrapbox) • In main workspace user can view the composition in the making and interact with the current result

16. Photocollage Framework Automatic Photocollage • User loads a few images of same scene taken from several views • Selecting an option to automatically generate a collage • Computer will cut up the images and construct a new whole by combining parts of each image while maintaining their relative positions in the picture, and applying random transformations to the pieces • User can specify final composition shape- application will then only collect images for construction within the boundaries

17. Photocollage Framework Interactive Photocollage • User loads images to be used in the collection window • Select areas of a picture to be used in the composition => goes to the workspace • Tools: scissors, glue, scale, rotate, stack order • Can also create photomontages with series of pictures by organizing all the pictures in a haphazard way

18. User Interface Design • Simple interface keeping user navigation through interface minimal • Main section is the workspace for putting pieces together • Scrapbox sits next to the workspace containing unused pieces • Pieces can be dragged onto the workspace from the scrapbox and vice versa • Tools as buttons located below workspace • Tabbed panes to separate browsing of image collection from the workspace and scrapbox

19. Implementation • Programming language: Java • Advantages: libraries for building graphical user interfaces and for image processing, platform independent, can turn into a web applet • Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT) and Java Foundation Classes (JFC) Project Swing APIs: support building GUI and graphics functionality as well as adding interactivity to applications • Java Advanced Imaging (JAI) API: object-oriented interface, simple high-level programming model for easily manipulating images

20. Prototype • Create GUI application with menus • Load series of images of a scene taken from different angles at a constant distance from each other within a 180 degree viewing range • Split up images into grids and randomly choose squares from one image to interchange with another

21. Usability Study • Methodology: Gather numerous amount of participants to carry out various tasks using the proposed system • Tasks: comparison between creating a photocollage using Photoshop and proposed system, • Analysis: ease of use, user comprehension of system, amount of time to carry out tasks