New software turns family albums and home movies into Picasso masterpieces

University of Bath ^

[LibWhacker]

>>> John Collomosse research pages

>>> Video demo of the technology
[may be slow for dial-up users]

The family portrait is set to become a great work of art thanks to new computer software that can turn photographs into cubist artworks in the style of Picasso.

The Picasso-effect software is part of a unique suite of imaging technologies developed by computer scientists at the University of Bath that turns photo albums, videos and movies into drawings, paintings, and cartoons. The software could also revolutionise the way that animations are made.

In order to create the software, the researchers had to teach the computer how to pick out the elements of photographs that, until now, only humans have been able to recognise as important.

By giving the computer an ‘aesthetic sense’, Dr Peter Hall and Dr John Collomosse from the Department of Computer Science, were able to create a series of automated artworks with new effects, such as making a Picasso cubist-style picture from ordinary photos.

According to Dr Hall, the key to the new software is helping the computer recognise the important aspects of the photograph or film footage being used:"When humans draw or paint they distil all the vast detail a camera sees into a few lines or daubs of paint. We plug digital cameras into our computers and write software that 'looks' for the same kind of important things as humans do."

The researchers fed the computer a series of pictures where they had identified the aesthetically important elements, such as a nose, eye or mouth. Gradually the computer learned how to recognise these important elements and overlook the more obvious contrasts between edges or borders, which is the limit of what computers can do at the moment.

Using photographs of a subject taken from multiple points of view, the software automatically picks out important areas within the image, which are cut out as chunks. The chunks are statistically shuffled and a few of them randomly selected and distorted into a 'cubist' composition ready for digital painting, creating a new kind of automated art that was impossible before.

The new software could also revolutionise the slow and laborious way that animations, such as the BBC’s Euro 2004 trailer and the arthouse film Waking Life (2001), are made.

Waking Life, which starred Ethan Hawke, was shot in its entirety on digital video. Digital animators then used conventional software to hand-paint the animation-key frames and use a computer to automatically work out what comes in-between.

In the Euro 2004 football competition graphics, football stars from throughout Europe were also painted into the action. This kind of hand-painting introduces flickering into animations.

By being able to understand what is in the video from an aesthetic point of view, the University of Bath software solves the problem by drawing animations accurately enough to prevent the flickering.

What's more, animators can use the software to paint frames in a much wider variety of styles, and even introduce special effects like those seen in Looney-Tune cartoons.

Examples of the automatically generated animations produced by the software can be viewed at: http://www.bath.ac.uk/pr/releases/picasso.htm and also on the research web pages.

Dr Collomosse, who developed the software for his PhD, said: “We have created a series of highly automated tools in our Video Paintbox which allow the animator to express their creativity but with a minimum of laborious manual work.”

Working with animator Dave Rowntree and his company Nanomation the group can take a conventional video and automatically insert streak-lines behind moving objects, make rigid objects bend and stretch as they move, and even caricature the way people walk.

Professional artists have judged the group's output to be of high aesthetic quality, and their academic peers recently awarded them several prizes.

For now, the software is still in development and will be limited to use by professional animators involved in the research, which is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. However, there has been some interest from software and animation companies and the team are keen to take these leads forward.

[LibWhacker]

New software turns family albums and home movies into Picasso masterpieces

Please, ladies and gentlemen. No pushing at the back, PLEASE!

[martin_fierro]

I know some crotch rocket rider who really looks like that now.

[martin_fierro]

Art software is cool.

[PAR35]

in the style of Picasso.

Yes, I want something that looks like it was drawn by a person best known for a work of Communist propaganda.

[xm177e2]

Yes, I want something that looks like it was drawn by a person best known for a work of Communist propaganda.

Are you referring to Guernica???

[JoeSixPack1]

Oh LOOK ----

All of sKerry's view points in one pic!! Amazing!

:-)

[Mach9]

Picasso. Masterpiece. Picasso masterpiece. An oxymoron. Truly the Kerry of oils.

[feedback doctor]

Been looking for software to do that, what is the program?

[martin_fierro]

PhotoMontage by ArcSoft

Very easy to use.

[feedback doctor]

Thank you!!!!

[PAR35]

Are you referring to Guernica???

Yes.

From Aviation History Magazine via TheHistoryNet:

On April 26, the northern Basque front was on the point of collapse, and the Condor Legion was ordered to destroy a bridge and railway station in Guernica to prevent the arrival of Loyalist reinforcements. He-111 and Dornier Do-17 bombers attacked the train station. Following that attack, Ju-52 bombers encountered dense smoke and dust, which forced them to drop their bombs blind. This was followed by other blind bombings that got out of hand, leaving from 300 to 1,600 civilians dead and inspiring Pablo Picasso's famous painting of the tragic incident.
http://www.thehistorynet.com/ahi/blcondor_legion_in_spain/index2.html

After all, who remembers the bombing of Cartagena?

[beaver fever]

No he's probably referring to the portrait of Stalin published in 1949.

Picasso joined the communist party in 1944 because he was a friend of Paul Eluard, who was part of the Stalinist faction of the communist party under Aragon and Daix. It took them five years of cajoling to get Picasso to do the portrait in 1949. It wasn't an oil painting but an indifferent drawing with an insulting title, which Aragon and Daix had to change in order to save their own necks, (Stalin was not known for his sense of humor).

I brought up the subject of Picasso's communism once with an art historian whose father was a Resistance fighter in Lyon and he scoffed at the idea that Picasso was a communist. Picasso was a communist of convenience after the war and socialized with German officers during the war. In 1956 he traded a painting for a multi-million dollar Villa called the Villa Califorie in Moulins owned by a rich American. The American considered the deal to be a bargain. I guess that makes Picasso a capitalist and a pretty smart one at that.

[LibWhacker]

That's great! Reminds me of ASCII art a little bit. Same principle. I stay away from graphics packages because they take too much learn how to use them well. The only one I ever liked was S2, an old steganography tool that now I can't find anywhere on the net! :-P

[martin_fierro]

Those are all FReeper photos, BTW.

[LibWhacker]

. . . because they take too much learn how to use them well.

Ummm . . . I meant to say, "because they take too much time to learn."

Man, I thought I checked that post for goofy errors! :-(

[xm177e2]

You are saying the bombing of Guernica was an accident, and not a deliberate test of Hitler's ability to bomb civilian targets?

[paleocon patriarch]

Is this a case of life imitating art

or art imitating life?

[LibWhacker]

Whoa, I've seen that picture before. What are they anyway, twins? Talk about getting dealt a lousy hand in life!

[PAR35]

When it comes to the Spanish Civil war, you have the story told by the Communists, their allies, apologists and prisoners, or the story told by the fascists. Since the quoted report treads a middle ground between the two, it strikes me that it probably has some merit.

Since you are well versed in the Red version of what happened, are you familiar with the Fascist version? They claimed after they occupied the area that the buildings showed evidence of having been demolished by explosives planted at ground level rather than by aerial bombardment - in short, they were claiming that the Reds were responsible.