Seam Carving for Content-Aware Image Resizing

Posted By: Nic Fillingham | Aug 23rd, 2007 @ 1:53 AM

"Seam Carving for Content-Aware Image Resizing" is a technique for resizing images that preserves key elements by deleting "seams" of pixels instead of block columns or rows.

The technique can also be reversed to widen or lengthen images by adding "seams" of pixels or to delete objects - similar to the smart erase feature from Digital Image Suite - but much cleaner.

The technology was developed by Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir and a paper explaining the concept was presented at SIGGRAPH 2007 earlier this month.

A very cool demo video has found it's way onto the net - check it out.

From the SIGGRAPH 2007 web site

Seam carving is a method for content-aware resizing that changes the size of an image according to its content. This paper shows applications to aspect-ratio change, image retargeting, and object removal.
Shai Avidan
Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL)
Ariel Shamir
The Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) and Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL)