6 ms·

Ask YC: How to Dazzle?

17 points by ideamonk 18y ago

eversince I have seen http://tinyurl.com/6ddzjh , I have always wanted to automate creation of such images. such an attempt is http://ideamonk.blogspot.com/2008/08/trying-to-dazzle.html But I am wondering how to perfect it. Right now it's just a rand() doing the magic. But there is something more to the original art. It seems that "the edges have a nice particle effect, the size of squares vary according to either luminance or similarity of neighbor area... and there might be a lot more to watch out! Boxes don't overlap much in the original work, and smaller tiny boxes play very significant role in giving life to the guitar kid..." So, fellow hackers please help this kid as to what he needs to know in image processing to be able to do the trick. Like how to detect uniform areas in an image... how to detect edges. For example if i have a photo of a shirt, I wish to detect where it is crumpled where it is plain. If I am able to do this, I will put big squares at plain areas and small ones at non uniform areas. I think that might reproduce the effect! Thanks!

alex_c 18y ago
It's been a while since my multimedia class (and I was never that good at it :D) but the effect is reminiscent of JPEG compression. Might be worth looking into that algorithm.
- ideamonk 18y ago
  JPEG compression is producing pixelation type effects... I think it is bigger than this. http://ideamonk.blogspot.com/2008/08/dazzle-hard.html http://ideamonk.blogspot.com/2008/08/dazzle-hard.html
  - alex_c 18y ago
    Not as very low quality settings: http://cobweb.ecn.purdue.edu/~ace/jpeg-tut/pix/imagec3.jpg http://cobweb.ecn.purdue.edu/~ace/jpeg-tut/pix/imagec3.jpg
ideamonk 18y ago
eversince I have seen http://tinyurl.com/6ddzjh http://tinyurl.com/6ddzjh , I have always wanted to automate creation of such images. such an attempt is http://ideamonk.blogspot.com/2008/08/trying-to-dazzle.html http://ideamonk.blogspot.com/2008/08/trying-to-dazzle.html But I am wondering how to perfect it. Right now it's just a rand() doing the magic. But there is something more to the original art. It seems that "the edges have a nice particle effect, the size of squares vary according to either luminance or similarity of neighbor area... and there might be a lot more to watch out! Boxes don't overlap much in the original work, and smaller tiny boxes play very significant role in giving life to the guitar kid..." So, fellow hackers please help this kid as to what he needs to know in image processing to be able to do the trick. Like how to detect uniform areas in an image... how to detect edges. For example if i have a photo of a shirt, I wish to detect where it is crumpled where it is plain. If I am able to do this, I will put big squares at plain areas and small ones at non uniform areas. I think that might reproduce the effect! Thanks!
- aswanson 18y ago
  For the edge detection, try sobel or laplacian: http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~weg22/can_tut.html http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~weg22/can_tut.html For uniform segments, perhaps quadtree decomposition: http://matlab.izmiran.ru/help/toolbox/images/enhanc12.html http://matlab.izmiran.ru/help/toolbox/images/enhanc12.html
- dandelany 18y ago
  In regards to the size, it looks to me like it varies according to similarity of neighboring area. This makes much more sense than luminance, since it allows the more complex areas of the images to be represented by more "pixels".
  - ideamonk 18y ago
    Yes after trying out luminance style plotting, I'm sure its based on uniformity! How about taking a point(p,q) and the area of 3x3 around it, find the average of luminance in this 3x3 block, store it as a0 and now increase the size of 3x3 square to 4x4, find average of luminance, lets call it a1, now if |a1-a0|<threshold, we say the area is uniform! and repeat steps till size<size_threshold Will this work? or instead of averaging luminance, I should average R,G,B separately and match against threshhold to increase the size(to be more strict) Have got exam tomorrow, will work more on these insights as soon as I finish preparing my data sctuctures and discrete maths syllabus. thanks :), (psst! can't get my head away from these new ideas)
omouse 18y ago
I'm curious, why aren't you trying to use the GIMP to do this? It can be scripted with Scheme/Script-Fu and Python, it seems that would be easier than using C++ and Allegro. Cool stuff in any case :D
- ideamonk 18y ago
  It will be less open in nature if I try doing in Script-Fu. Firstly I will have to understand how it works... then it will become something which only GIMP users can use, and besides... I just want to do from basics... once done ;) I will surely make it for GIMP and Matlab (psst.. I have no idea of matlab and know very little python ;) ) yeah! GIMP will give support for loads of image formats ;) But nothing new to explore before my exams get over :X
maxklein 18y ago
Split the picture into grids of 10x10. Take the color in that grid and find the average color of all the colors in there. Calculate the color distance to the box beside it. Do same for luminance.
herdrick 18y ago
This is great.
rewind 18y ago
Here is another option: http://mybedazzler.com/ http://mybedazzler.com/
- ideamonk 18y ago
  what the hell is this?