Here's something else I did not see coming: "seam carving" for image resizing.
It is making a picture narrower or broader without distorting it, and thus changing the scene which was photographed.
I find it interesting that Mike Johnston (The Online Photographer) hates it. It seems he considers the subject to be holy and sacrosanct, and the subject to be what photography is all about. And he has talked about how digital photography is not really photography, because it is way too easy to change an image.
I dunno. How holy is "reality"? Does it even exist?
I remember seeing this effect already in mid 1990s. In some experimental software. Back then it looked a like a novelty with little real use. (At least I couldn't think of any.) But now, maybe it could help solve the switch from 100ppi to 200ppi in web browser apps.
ReplyDeleteAs for tools. Could a statue be carved with a sledgehammer and coal chisel? Would a 4" emulsion brush be used to paint a delicate portrait?
ReplyDeleteWhy not use current and contemporary tools. I know I've spent no time in a dark room, when I finally had space I had no time, when I had time I had no space. Photoshop gives me access to darkroom like tools, and I can finally join in the game.
If everyone had fixed focus fixed aperture cameras, would he complain about someone having an adjustable iris?
Besides, seam carving is only a fancy word for montage, or collage, and they are both accepted. There also seem to be lots of elements of cell animation used too - take an image and slide it over a background. Sorry, these are all old techniques, just a bit of software helping out.
Something I learnt quite early on, the camera always lies.
alex said: "Besides, seam carving is only a fancy word for montage, or collage ..."
ReplyDeleteNot exactly. Montage means taking things from more than one source and joining them, often by one thing partially overlapping something else.
In seam carving there is no joining or overlapping. Instead the single image is either folded (shrink) or multiplied (englarge) in places. The trick is that the folds don't have to be straight, and heavy calculation is applied to find the path where the folding is least noticeable.
Not that the fancy name (seam carving) would be any more justified looking at it this way. Just that I think there's a subtle difference from montage/collage.
Interesting to see if Apple implements this in Webkit (Safari).
The visual effect I was seeing was as if the "solid" items had been cut out, the background squished - not just a mathmatical shear or shrink applied to the whole, then the "stickers" stuck back onto the new background. True, what is happening is more like making that bank note guy smile by wrinkling up the image and ironing it flat again.
ReplyDeleteSo I stand corrected, and feel justified in my original analogy.
Both of them!? Well done!
ReplyDelete:)
"How holy is 'reality'? Does it even exist?"
ReplyDeleteReality does exist. Our perception of reality is incomplete at best, and faulty at worst, but there is a reality that transcends our own consciousness. I had never really thought of it as "holy," but I will venture right now that if anything should be respected as holy, it is reality.
If there is no reality, there is no such thing as a lie. But I know lies exist.
When we act with an aggressive disregard for reality, the consequences can be severe, because, in the end, reality always wins.
Bush aide Karl Rove told a New York Times reporter "that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"
We know how that's working out.
Trick photography has been around for a long time. It's been used to amuse and entertain us, and it's been used to deceive us. This is a very sophisticated new tool for trick photography. It won't have any effect on reality, but we're all going to have to develop a new standard for what we accept as "evidence."
If a photograph is to represent reality, then an honest to goodness snap is what you need.
ReplyDeleteIf the photograph is to illustrate a point, and cropping, enlarging, or seam carving helps better illustrate the point, then use the tools and do it. We all know the photos on the kids menu do not represent what appears on the plate.