Photocollage System

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

Paris by David Hockney

Portrait of the Artist’s Mother by David Hockney

Woman with Cigarette by Joyce Neimanas

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

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

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

Related Work The STAMP Collage 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

Related Work The STAMP Collage 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

Related Work The STAMP Collage The STAMP Collage

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

Related Work Adobe Photoshop Adobe PhotoshopEvaluation Lack in visual cues needed for collagesLack in visual cues needed for collages Changing stacking order of layers is bothersome (drag layer in Layers Palette or go into series of menus)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 commandTransforming images require going into menu options to select command Scaling images require holding down to prevent distortionScaling images require holding down to prevent distortion Can make layer contents invisible without moving or deleting themCan make layer contents invisible without moving or deleting them Can link layer sets to move layer contents together simultaneouslyCan link layer sets to move layer contents together simultaneously

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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