Adobe hires a passel of brainiacs

Adobe Systems has hired Shai Avidan, co-developer of a technology to dynamically resize photos in a way that preserves the more important areas of the image, and a couple of other researchers as well.

The content-aware resizing tool stretched the two narrower images by Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige into the adjacent wider versions.

(Credit: Shai Avidan, Ariel Shamir)

Avidan's presentation this month at the Siggraph computer graphics show and the accompanying video has ignited a frenzy of chatter from Slashdot, TechCrunch and elsewhere. I first heard about it last week from the blog of Adobe Photoshop Senior Product Manager John Nack, who also brought word of the new hire Wednesday.

Avidan began work at Adobe Monday. Another new hire is Wojciech Matusik, who's worked on a camera lens system that can photograph an image simultaneously at four different apertures and on a real-time image selection technique that employs dual-image sensors. And starting in a couple of weeks is Sylvain Paris, who's worked on technology such as the two-scale tone management that can Ansel-Adamsize a photo by transferring the style of one to another.

Avidan's "content-aware image resizing" technology works by searching for the vertical or horizontal pathways that skirt around busy areas of the photo--for example, between clouds in front of an even blue sky. It then removes or adds pixels on either side of that pathway, depending on whether the image is being shrunk or enlarged.

The technology also can be used to crop out specific parts of an image that a user highlights as disposable. Neighboring pixels are stretched to fill in the gap. Though, Avidan and technology co-creator Ariel Shamir caution in a paper about the technology that the resizing doesn't work in some situations--for example a picture of car that occupies the full frame of the image.

Nack labeled the technology "holy-crap-worthy," but not all are so excited about it.

Griped Mike Johnston at the Online Photographer:

"To me this is a form of auto-fakery that will further erode whatever integrity photographs still possess," he said. "I'm not saying it's wrong, just that it's wrong for me given my philosophy of what photography's all about, and I won't say it's bad, just that it's bad in terms of the principles I try to abide by when I picture the world as a photographer."

Personally, I'm in Johnston's camp, but the resizing technology is intriguing. In any event, before getting too antsy about a new spate of wickedly Photoshopped news photos, take Nack's disclaimer to heart: "Just because a particular researcher has worked on a particular technology in his or her past life, it's not possible to conclude that a specific feature will show up in a particular Adobe product

[TxTom]

Digital Lies

Well, I'm also in the same camp as the Online Photographer. My days of being a daily news photographer are long behind me-we shot film-and the term 'pictures don't lie' IS a lie.

I can remember when 'scitex'd' was the term used for what is now 'photoshopped' when referring to altering reality in some form or fashion. I went to a photo convention discussing ethics in photojournalism about the subject and was shocked in the percentage of those willing to sacrifice principles in 'journalistic truth' for the sake of a 'better photo.'

Back then, a photographer--I think in Philly--was fired for scitex'ing a coke can out of a fairly innocuous photo. Nowadays, that practice is commonplace.

Digital is great for daily work, terrible for the potential and commonplace abuses for the sake of a 'better photo.'

[gulker]

It's the source, not the technology

People have been able to make photos 'lie' almost since the birth of emulsion. French photograpers in the 19th century delighted in putting multiple lighter-than-air balloons into the skies of their photos using double exposure.

When I was a young photographer working at my first legit daily, I used to browse the morgue on slow nights looking for good news pix: I was amazed at how many scissors-and-paste jobs were sitting in those archives, especially from the 50s and early 60s - and we weren't eliminating coke cans. We were putting 2 people next to each other from completely different shots, making appear they were together. This was mostly gossip page stuff, but still...

Ultimately every author will be judged on their record in our ultra-transparent times. This new technology is a nit compared with what Photoshop already allows. MOstof the legit photogs I know don't take coke cans or anything else (except dust marks, maybe) out of photos...

(Full disclosure - I work for Adobe, but this my personal opinion in no way sanctioned by my employer).

[Shankland]

photo doctoring an ages-old practice

Yes, you're right that the horse is already out of the barn when it comes to photo editing, digital or otherwise. Back from my darkroom days, dodging and burning were perfectly acceptable.

Clearly there are some things that are outrageously wicked with news photos (giving the senator crossed eyes) and some things that are just fine (crop the photo tightly on the subject). The tricky part is where to draw the line in the gray area in between. And

[wroush]

Brainiacs Brigade -- Bigger Than You Know

You mention Shai Avidan and Sylvain Paris as new Adobe hires. But there's also computational photography expert Wojciech Matusik (who joined Adobe in May) and "computational audition" researcher Paris Smaragdis. Matusik, Smaragdis, and Avidan are all emigres from the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories in Cambridge MA, which has had its share of troubles of late. In fact, you might say Adobe has been conducting a regular panty raid on MERL, with the result that it will have its first real cluster of heavy-hitting researchers outside the West Coast. See our coverage at Xconomy: http://www.xconomy.com/2007/08/29/adobe-snatches-up-stars-from-crumbling-mitsubishi-lab-creates-boston-research-outpost/

[Shankland]

Thanks for the extra detail

I got Wojciech Matusik in the blog, but hadn't heard of Paris Smaragdis, and it's great to have the connection to Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories called out explicitly.