Adobe Hires Co-Inventor of Image Resizer Technology

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1. Deals and Coupons
   

   August 28th, 2007 at 3:15 pm

   Wow NICE! Should he be thanking you Mike?

2. Stan Oleynick
   

   August 28th, 2007 at 3:35 pm

   Technically you can do this in photoshop now, but it obviously takes much more time and effort so this is great news especially for those who are working with graphics a lot…

3. Mikew
   

   August 28th, 2007 at 3:46 pm

   Sigh. Stan: technically, you can do this in PAINT if you have patience to follow his algorithm on paper and change one pixel at a time with the pencil tool.

4. raghu kulkarni
   

   August 28th, 2007 at 3:51 pm

   Shows the power of top bloggers. But was this a good thing? Personally I would have liked the inventors to create a new stand-alone product around their invention. They would have had lot more freedom to create their product; I’m sure investors would have lined up to finance this.

5. Ande Gregson
   

   August 28th, 2007 at 3:52 pm

   wow, this is impressive, the potential for photographers is amazing, picture editing, tweaking, updating - i can think of a 1000 ways i could use this - web pages will be truly liquid if this can be built in to a browser to scale images on the fly…

   great for mobile devices, you get the image truly reflected but in a small display

   i am impressed!

6. Mitch
   

   August 28th, 2007 at 3:53 pm

   You can even do it with real-world photos if you are really good with scissors

7. Roy
   

   August 28th, 2007 at 3:58 pm

   as a CG professional, i applaud these guys. I also applaud Adobe for the snag. Almost can forgive them for coldfusion if they get that into Photoshop someday!

8. Mario Ruiz
   

   August 28th, 2007 at 4:05 pm

   Hi Micheal,

   We don’t realize that success is one or two steps away from us. Who would have thought that a person working on Photoshop is a so valuable.

   I believe it was yesterday Guy Kawasaki presented an ad for a job with 2 years of experience on Photoshop and other tools. Most people reacted like, “this is nothing,” “everyone can do it,” “I have more tools under my belly.”

   Design a goal, be focused, and work hard, our 15 minutes of glory will arrive.

   Good thing you chose this video, because we all need to make the idea popula to make it work.

   Mario Ruiz
   @ http://www.oursheet.com

9. Johnny Clegg
   

   August 28th, 2007 at 4:09 pm

   Awesome…but this shouldn’t work with all images.

10. Colby Grenier
    

    August 28th, 2007 at 4:20 pm

    Newton, MA

11. Some Guy
    

    August 28th, 2007 at 4:26 pm

    It’s Newton, MA - although the original settlers called it NewTowne - so maybe you were going for a retro thing?

12. linuxamp
    

    August 28th, 2007 at 4:41 pm

    From Mitch: “You can even do it with real-world photos if you are really good with scissors”

    You’d also need a copy machine to create all those missing areas if you enlarge an image.

    Kidding aside, I’m glad Adobe got this guy. Hopefully this won’t be his only contribution to Adobe technology and we’ll see more innovative technology.

13. David Mackey
    

    August 28th, 2007 at 5:09 pm

    Wow. This is some pretty sweet stuff.

14. Ron Barkley
    

    August 28th, 2007 at 5:53 pm

    I just want to douse some water before we all go congratulating ourselves here on getting this guy a job. First, this video was all over the web: digg, reddit, etc. Second, it’s extremely common (the norm, really) for siggraph paper publishers to go on to work at Adobe, Pixar, NVidia, etc. This guy did good work for sure, but his hiring by Adobe is nothing new.

    @Raghu >> “Personally I would have liked the inventors to create a new stand-alone product around their invention”

    The best standalone product he could have hoped to build would have been … a Photoshop plugin. Photoshop is the tool people use, and people do not want to change their workflow for a new feature; they want the features to come into their workflows. Many Web2.0 companies would do well to think about that.

15. Allen Stern
    

    August 28th, 2007 at 7:07 pm

    Mike - did ya get the typical recruiter fee

16. Peter
    

    August 28th, 2007 at 7:42 pm

    So much excitement - about a DEMO. Not even a ptototype…

17. Jason
    

    August 28th, 2007 at 9:08 pm

    “Technically you can do this in photoshop”

    you sure can. But Firefox or IE can’t do that when you resize the image. That’s the whole point of the research.

18. Glenn Fleishman
    

    August 28th, 2007 at 10:31 pm

    I don’t know why no one has noted that resizing photos in this remarkably clever fashion distorts the verity of the photographs. I’m not being pure about; it’s just that no newsgathering organization could use this sort of feature. PR photos and stock photos could be subject to it. I just don’t see a practical application for anything but backgrounds or specific stock images. The cleverness, well, there’s a lot of use for these guys’ cleverness.

19. Jamie
    

    August 28th, 2007 at 10:39 pm

    #4 its a feature not a business, aside from licensing the patent how would you make money on it?

20. Gordon
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 1:07 am

    I’m sure Adobe will be working on getting this into Photoshop but I wouldn’t be surprised if it makes its way into Flash as well.

21. chrisco
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 2:10 am

    Can they resize this? http://i27.photobucket.com/alb.....ls-pic.jpg

22. Jon
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 5:07 am

    He got his just deserts… he spent the time and energy into developing something new… I hope he got a good sign-on bonus and title as a result!

    Jon

23. john
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 6:15 am

    yep, saw that one coming. good for him though. i really think this will be a great tool and adobe could really use it.

24. Aman
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 7:11 am

    This is a cool technique, and i accept it will be handy in numerous places but for realworld photographs when i want to see what exactly a place/sceneary looks like i would prefer to see a cut-out version or scrolable one rather that seeing a distorted or let me repharse “not exact” view .

25. Tradervic
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 8:53 am

    I tip my hat to Adobe for vigilance in grabbing new technology/know-how to make their products better. I also tip my hat to Shai for getting recognized and hired by an 800lb gorilla like Adobe. Win - Win situation!

26. Digguser
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 10:31 am

    Great job Adobe!

27. What is GIMP?
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 10:43 am

    The narrator gives a lot of information in the video. I wonder if this could not be copied into The GIMP or another open source program.

28. Nathaniel Currier
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 10:52 am

    Wow that is really impressive. Cant wait to see that somehow rolled into the adobe lineup.

29. Kris Meister
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 11:16 am

    I think many people are looking at a narrow photoshop only benefit of this technology.

    The developer says in his video that the image seam data is stored inside of the image file itself. So that might lead to browsers being able to resize images more intelligently.

    The real benefit is not because it would save 20 minutes of your photoshop work to create one image, Its that you create one image and when you display it at different resolutions it always looks good.

30. tehjamez
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 11:34 am

    Godo thing techcrunch is here, or this guy would never get a job! ( dont get me wrong, I love the site ) but this site did NOT land him a job, if anything other than himself did, YouTube or digg (which linked straight to youtube and got 1000x more hits than here) did.

    Again, no offense intended but puh-lease people

31. MrX_TLO
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 11:53 am

    It’s cool to see Adobe hire him instead of just ripping him off like most companies do.

32. Lukas
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 11:59 am

    This would be so useful! I really hope Adobe will incorporate this into their next Photoshop offering.

33. rodica buzescu
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 12:01 pm

    Photoshop is probably the best application for this new technique. It allows the algorithm to work while still under the surveillance of a human eye.
    I am concerned about seeing this implemented for browsers though - imagine looking at art or photography through this algorithm…it would be a nightmare for a lot of artists and art lovers alike.

34. Adam
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 12:16 pm

    Mad Magazine has been doing this for years!

35. Thomas
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 12:27 pm

    Wow, very impressive!

    Looking forward to try this in the next photoshop.

36. Joe
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 1:02 pm

    Photoshopped!

37. Zoop
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 1:12 pm

    “I’m not being pure about; it’s just that no newsgathering organization could use this sort of feature. PR photos and stock photos could be subject to it. I just don’t see a practical application for anything but backgrounds or specific stock images.”

    Or phrased another way, it’s only useful for the 98% of all photography that is not newsgathering.

38. TodayIsNotOverYet
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 2:52 pm

    Well that was a really clever move by Adobe. We should expect good things coming soon. Hope they produce results as fast as they hire him

39. Mike
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 3:23 pm

    Wow, I could sure use that function… and would rather see it as a stand alone product than wrapped up in Photoshop…

    its would be a quick editor and resize program..

40. Fubiz
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 4:21 pm

    Amazing news!

41. Tom
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 5:07 pm

    That demo looked amazing for it.

42. Bob Dole
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 5:21 pm

    vote for me. 2008

43. jeN
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 7:14 pm

    wow!! so cool!!

44. David
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 7:18 pm

    Awesome. But like tehjamez I can’t help but note that I love it when Michael takes a little TechCrunch credit tax off-the-top for everything he mentions:

    The day before yesterday I showed the above video (it has now been viewed nearly 100,000 times)…

45. Wally
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 8:01 pm

    wow… great hopefully east asia college can add this in thier curriculum………

46. James T.
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 8:13 pm

    Most of you are talking about this as if it’s just another stagnant image editing tool. This may change the look of the internet.

47. James T.
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 8:15 pm

    It may also have a huge effect on the perspective value of imagery, already dealt a serious blow by digital.

48. Max
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 9:30 pm

    Holly wow! That is so awesome!

    My main question is - how flexible is it? He demonstrated wrapping text within a browser, is this technique capable of operating in similar applications or is it too intensive and and can only run in photoshop?
    –
    Max … Out!
    http://www.cmyos.com - free online operating system

49. TD
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 10:32 pm

    Awesome! How long before this technology comes to video??? This would be great on Webcastr!

50. naveen k
    

    August 29th, 2007 at 11:01 pm

    This is simply brilliant. Many a time, I had situations when we had to resize the image to suit my needs. This feature’s gonna attract market attention and I want to see this working in my own hands than watching a video!

51. Giovambattista Fazioli
    

    August 30th, 2007 at 2:13 am

    Amazing!!!!!!

52. chris
    

    August 30th, 2007 at 4:35 am

    Fluid. That’s what it means.

53. Dan
    

    August 30th, 2007 at 6:32 am

    I know it works with all of their examples. I can’t wait to use it
    and find out the quirks so I can make A short video of how it really
    works. I have been using psd since 2.5 and now cs3. I did learn 1 thing and that is if any product can give you 65% or better then it is good.
    10/4 over and out

54. Brent
    

    August 30th, 2007 at 11:43 am

    Glenn briefly hit upon some interesting ethical considerations that this technique raises - photographers have a professional obligation to not distort the perspective or subject when their photo is supposed to portray a real situation or location. For stock and background imagery this isn’t really an issue, but where do you draw the line? Obviously news photos should never be manipulated, but what about photos for tourism or travel agencies? What about product advertisement? When does photo manipulation cross the line and become lying?

    I think the vast majority of people will use this technology responsibly, but I can foresee a small number of people jumping in over their heads and getting themselves in trouble. There have been several high profile cases of photographers being fired and essentially blacklisted for photo manipulation in the past several years, for reasons as obvious as modifying a photo of a war zone to exaggerate the level of destruction, but also for seemingly benign purposes like moving the relative position of the Great Pyramids to get them all to fit on a portrait cover.

55. Hector
    

    August 31st, 2007 at 12:03 am

    #53 about the quirks, I implemented a version of the algorithm:

    http://hectorgon.blogspot.com/.....dirty.html

    Except using stochastic path samples instead of graph cuts to find the minimum energy seams. It seems to work well on things like bushes and natural objects.

    It doesn’t seem to work so well on stuff with structure like faces or buildings. Especially if they are solid colors, because the minimum energy paths like cutting through areas of solid colors.

    Expect straight lines to become not so straight as you start reducing the image drastically. At least thats my experience playing around with the algorithm.

56. Irmgard
    

    September 1st, 2007 at 6:41 am

    If you want to get a hands-on idea what this new retargeting technique feels like, there is a prototype for download at http://www.thegedanken.com/retarget/

    At the moment, you can only do horizontal resizing, but I think the program looks quite promising and very interesting nevertheless. Works well for images where the important part has a good contrast compared to the less interesting regions.

    Check it out and have fun!

57. Example
    

    September 5th, 2007 at 9:43 am

    We’re screwed… everything is a lie. Reality ends here, don’t trust anything on the Web anymore.

    Oh, sorry, I forgot. We’re already there.

58. pahito
    

    September 5th, 2007 at 12:13 pm

    Que zarpado, mi primo se lo va a comprar para hacerselo a la pinchila!!!

59. databang
    

    September 10th, 2007 at 4:26 am

    Soon, “pixel-monkey” to “retargeting monkey” I shall be. Either I will make more money in time saved, OR everyone will be able to do it… making my George Jetson hotkey job obsolete. “Get me off this crazy thing!!!”

    Maybe I’ll get a job in Uganda where they’re still using Photoshop 2 and drinkin’ Classic Coke. I hear a guy can clean-up there, especially with this technology. –hah!

    My mom was right –I should have been a doctor.

    Ah well.