Comments on: Firefox Needs Content-Aware Image Resizing

By: Fred

Fred — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 14:44:00 +0000

Stephane: Wow, that is great, well done! You should make an add-on out of it

By: sroucheray

sroucheray — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:53:32 +0000

I started an implementation in pure JavaScript using next Firefox 3.1 / 3.5 features. You can read it here : http://labs.pimsworld.org/2009/04/firefox-native-content-aware-image-resizing/ Stephane

By: Evan

Evan — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 21:43:35 +0000

Someone could write a specification for embedding the pixel seam removal order bitmaps (as seen in the second video) as a chunk into existing image formats. From what I know about PNG this would be fairly easy. Mozilla did something similar for the APNG specification. If this was done then compliant User Agents would know how to resize those images, and non-compliant UAs would show images like they do today.

By: Asrail

Asrail — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 01:37:46 +0000

The article[1] talk about “multi-size” images.

If some program (say, Gecko) supports multi-size images, the author is able to specify some images for some display devices or sizes of the screen.

1 – link to the article (22MB, English, technical) on the liquid rescale gimp plugin homepage.

By: Jason Davis

Jason Davis — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 01:35:34 +0000

The algorithm is very simple to implement; we had to implement it for an undegraduate CS class, and it took about an hour in Matlab to write it and a few hours in C++. The real issue is that it selects lines of deletion based on “minimal energy”. Given a high-variance area of a web page, however, it may elect to start taking lines out through font glyphs. The name “content-aware” is somewhat of a misnomer, as the algorithm will have no problem making text illegible. It will also preferentially remove whitespace, which may again reduce readability.

By: Image manipulations at Justin Dolske’s blog

Image manipulations at Justin Dolske’s blog — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 23:10:39 +0000

[…] Fred and Borris both recently blogged about intelligent image resizing. This previously came up about a year ago, probably when this research video started making the rounds: […]

By: Content-aware resizing knows what you want « Boriss’ Blog

Content-aware resizing knows what you want « Boriss’ Blog — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:15:43 +0000

[…] a more intelligent tool to get excited about: content-aware image resizing in Photoshop 4 (hat tip: Frederic Wenzel). This feature lets you resize an image while respecting its subject and complexity by scaling the […]

By: Uther

Uther — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 06:24:41 +0000

I think this is not a good idea to have this feature in Firefox by default. It seem pretty useful on landscapes pictures, but as we can see in the second videos, the cube are loosing this original shape. The behavior is too unpredictable too use this feature automatically.
To enable it the author of the page should be able to specify the resize method he want with something like but i don’t think this is possible. An extension may be a good idea.

By: Mark S

Mark S — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 19:52:30 +0000

My first response is that there is no benefit to the end user.
But after a second thought, it could potentially be useful in situations where we know the web page is going to be resized/zoomed. i.e. mobile users
As long as the content-aware resizing is explicitly specified by the content provider.
So when you go to cnn.com, they could take a picture with multiple individuals and ‘protect’ one of them so they appear more close-upped when viewed on a mobile device.
But honestly, if I were cnn (or anyone else) I would want control over how my images were rendered (the potential for embarrassing images is high) so I’d rather just post alternate images that would be shown to mobile users at particular zoom levels.

Nope, on third thought I’m not seeing the benefit to users or providers.
Not saying there isn’t a scenario, just not seeing one yet.

By: Fred

Fred — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 17:19:58 +0000

I get your point, Pete. It is not certain how much, if any, benefit this is going to give to the user. I am with commenter Havvy (#4) here: Making an extension could show how useful, or not, the feature would be in the browser world.