Method and apparatus for identifying a representative area of an image

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9424653-B2
Application number	US-201414264602-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Apr 29, 2014
Priority date	Apr 29, 2014
Publication date	Aug 23, 2016
Grant date	Aug 23, 2016

Abstract

A computer implemented method for generating a representative thumbnail for an image. The method comprises determining a representative area of an image, the determining comprising determining an absence of faces in the image; dividing the image into one or more zones; and selecting a zone with maximum edge strength as the representative area; and generating a thumbnail by cropping the image to the representative area.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A computer implemented method comprising:
determining a representative area of an image, the determining comprising:
scaling the image prior to dividing the image into one or more zones by:
determining a first scale factor as a height of the image divided by a desired height of a thumbnail image to be generated;
determining a second scale factor as a width of the image divided by a desired width of the thumbnail image to be generated;
determining that the first scale factor is not equal to the second scale factor; and
scaling the image using the first and the second scale factor to produce a scaled image;

determining an absence of faces in the image;
dividing the scaled image into one or more zones; and
selecting a zone with maximum edge strength as the representative area; and

generating the thumbnail image by cropping the scaled image to the representative area.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: generating a plurality of modified thumbnail images by applying a plurality of effects to the generated thumbnail image.

3. The method of claim 2 , further comprising: displaying the plurality of modified thumbnail images in a grid.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining the representative area of the image further comprises:
converting the image to a grayscale image;
applying a filter to produce a smoothed image with reduced noise; and
detecting edges in the smoothed image to produce an edge-detected image.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein dividing the scaled image comprises:
determining whether the first scale factor is greater than the second scale factor;
dividing the scaled image horizontally when the first scale factor is greater than the second scale factor; and
dividing the scaled image vertically when the second scale factor is greater than the first scale factor.

6. The method of claim 4 , further comprising computing a strength of edges for each zone.

7. The method of claim 3 , further comprising:
detecting user selection of at least one of the plurality of modified thumbnail images; and
applying the effect corresponding to the selected modified thumbnail image to the image to produce a modified image.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein dividing the scaled image into one or more zones further comprises: dividing the scaled image into overlapping zones based on the first scale factor and the second scale factor.

9. A system comprising:
at least one processor; and
at least one non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the system to:
determine a representative area of an image by:
scaling the image prior to dividing the image into one or more zones by:
determining a first scale factor as a height of the image divided by a desired height of a thumbnail image to be generated;
determining a second scale factor as a width of the image divided by a desired width of the thumbnail image to be generated;
determining that the first scale factor is not equal to the second scale factor; and
scaling the image using the first and the second scale factor to produce a scaled image;

determining an absence of faces in the image;
dividing the scaled image into one or more zones; and
selecting a zone with maximum edge strength as the representative area; and

generate the thumbnail image by cropping the scaled image to the representative area.

10. The system of claim 9 , further comprising instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the system to:
generate a plurality of modified thumbnail images by applying a plurality of effects to the generated thumbnail image; and
display the plurality of modified thumbnail images in a grid.

11. The system of claim 9 , wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the system to select the representative area by:
detecting user selection of at least one of the plurality of modified thumbnail images; and
applying the effect corresponding to the selected modified thumbnail image to the image to produce a modified image.

12. The system of claim 9 , wherein dividing the scaled image comprises:
determining whether the first scale factor is greater than the second scale factor;
dividing the scaled image horizontally when the first scale factor is greater than the second scale factor; and
dividing the scaled image vertically when the second scale factor is greater than the first scale factor.

13. The system of claim 9 , wherein dividing the scaled image into one or more zones further comprises: dividing the scaled image into overlapping zones based on the first scale factor and the second scale factor.

14. A non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions thereon that, when executed by at least one processor, cause a computer system to perform a method comprising:
determining a representative area of an image, wherein determining the representative area of the image comprises:
scaling the image prior to dividing the image into one or more zones by:
determining a first scale factor as a height of the image divided by a desired height of a thumbnail image to be generated;
determining a second scale factor as a width of the image divided by a desired width of the thumbnail image to be generated;
determining that the first scale factor is not equal to the second scale factor; and
scaling the image using the first and the second scale factor to produce a scaled image;

determining an absence of faces in the image;
dividing the scaled image into one or more zones; and
selecting a zone with maximum edge strength as the representative area; and

generating a thumbnail by cropping the scaled image to the representative area.

15. The computer readable medium of claim 14 , further comprising instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor cause the system to perform steps comprising: generating a plurality of modified thumbnail images by applying a plurality of effects to the generated thumbnail image.

16. The computer readable medium of claim 15 , further comprising instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor cause the system to perform steps comprising: displaying the plurality of modified thumbnail images in a grid.

17. The computer readable medium of claim 14 , wherein determining further comprises:
converting the image to a grayscale image;
applying a filter to produce a smoothed image with reduced noise;
detecting edges in the smoothed image to produce an edge-detected image; and
computing a strength of edges for each zone in the edge-detected image.

18. The computer readable medium of claim 14 , wherein dividing the scaled image comprises:
determining whether the first scale factor is greater than the second scale factor;
dividing the scaled image horizontally when the first scale factor is greater than the second scale factor; and
dividing the scaled image vertically when the second scale factor is greater than the first scale factor.

19. The computer readable medium of claim 16 , further comprising instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the computer system to perform steps comprising:
receiving user selection of at least one of the plurality of modified thumbnails; and
applying the effect corresponding to the selected modified thumbnail to the image to produce a modified image.

20. The computer readable medium of claim 14 , wherein dividing the

Assignees

• Adobe Systems Inc

Inventors

• Gupta Mohit
• Grandhi Durga Ganesh

Classifications

• G06V10/25

  Determination of region of interest [ROI] or a volume of interest [VOI] · CPC title

• G06K9/3233

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06T7/0081

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06T2207/20132

  Image cropping · CPC title

• G06T2210/22

  Cropping · CPC title