WORLDBEAT - Algorithm turns photos into digital art
A team of U.S. and British researchers have created a software program that uses high-level mathematics to turn facial expressions -- the scrunch of an eyebrow or a wide-eyed stare -- into digital art.
The program, known as "empathic painting," results in a distinct stylized interpretation of an existing photograph, one that gently changes like flowing waves according to a person's mood.
It falls into a category of research called non-photorealistic computer graphics, an area that has grown over the last 10 years, said John Collomosse of the computer science department at the University of Bath in England.
"We're interested in the borderline of computer graphics, the output of images, and computer vision, the input of images, and these two disciplines are converging," said Collomosse, who holds a doctorate's degree in artistic rendering, images and video.
Over the course of three months, the team sought to see how an algorithm could interpret a person's facial movements with minimal end-user interaction.
The use of algorithms to create paintings from photos is nothing new. Commercial products such as Adobe Systems Inc.'s Photoshop program have a feature to turn still photographs into digital paintings or charcoal renderings.
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