Image capture and ordering

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9712746-B2
Application number	US-201313826091-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Mar 14, 2013
Priority date	Mar 14, 2013
Publication date	Jul 18, 2017
Grant date	Jul 18, 2017

Abstract

One or more techniques and/or systems are provided for ordering images for panorama stitching and/or for providing a focal point indicator for image capture. For example, one or more images, which may be stitched together to create a panorama of a scene, may be stored within an image stack according to one or more ordering preferences, such as where manually captured images are stored within a first/higher priority region of the image stack as compared to automatically captured images. One or more images within the image stack may be stitched according to a stitching order to create the panorama, such as using images in the first region for a foreground of the panorama. Also, a current position of a camera may be tracked and compared with a focal point of a scene to generate a focal point indicator to assist with capturing a new/current image of the scene.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for ordering images for panorama stitching, comprising:
maintaining, by a computing device, an image stack comprising a plurality of existing images, the maintaining comprising:
receiving a new image;
responsive to the new image corresponding to a first ordering preference, adding the new image to a first region of the image stack having a lower stitching priority relative to a second region of the image stack;
receiving an input corresponding to the new image indicating that the new image is to be moved to a higher stitching priority region in the image stack;
responsive to the received input, adding the new image to the second region of the image stack; and
stitching, by the computing device, the new image and the plurality of existing images in the image stack according to a stitching order priority assigned to each image of the image stack to generate the panorama.

2. The method of claim 1 , the first ordering preference corresponding to a manually captured image and the second ordering preference corresponding to an automatically captured image.

3. The method of claim 1 , the stitching order associating the first region with a foreground bias and the second region with a background bias.

4. The method of claim 1 , comprising:
responsive to receiving input modifying a position of an image within the image stack, reordering one or more images within the image stack based upon the input.

5. The method of claim 4 , the reordering comprising at least one of:
reassigning a first image from the first region to the second region; or
reassigning a second image from the second region to the first region.

6. A system for ordering images for panorama stitching, comprising:
an image stack component configured to:
maintain, by a computing device, an image stack comprising a plurality of existing images, the maintaining comprising:
receive a new image;
responsive to the new image corresponding to a first ordering preference, add the new image to a first region of the image stack having a lower stitching priority relative to a second region of the image stack;
receive an input corresponding to the new image indicating that the new image is to be moved to a higher stitching priority region in the image stack; and
responsive to the received input, add the new image to a second region of the image stack; and
a stitching component configured to:
stitch, by the computing device, the new image and the plurality of existing images in the image stack according to a stitching order priority assigned to each image of the image stack to generate the panorama.

7. The system of claim 6 , comprising:
a camera position component configured to:
track current position of a camera;
compare the current position with a focal point of a scene, depicted by one or more previously captured images within the image stack, to generate a focal point indicator; and
provide the focal point indicator during capture of the current image of the scene.

8. The system of claim 6 , the stitching order associating the first region with a foreground bias and the second region with a background bias.

9. The system of claim 6 , the image stack component configured to:
responsive to receiving input modifying a position of an image within the image stack, reorder one or more images within the image stack based upon the input.

10. The system of claim 9 , the image stack component configured to perform at least one of:
reassign a first image from the first region to the second region; or
reassign a second image from the second region to the first region.

11. The system of claim 7 , the stitching component configured to stitch the one or more images in the image stack based upon the focal point to generate the panorama.

12. The method of claim 1 , the first ordering preference designating that an image captured later in time is added to a top position in the image stack.

13. The method of claim 6 , the first ordering preference designating that an image captured later in time is added to a top position in the image stack.

Assignees

• Microsoft Technology Licensing Llc

Inventors

• Arcas Blaise Aguera Y
• Unger Markus
• Barnett Donald A
• Gedye David Maxwell
• Sinha Sudipta Narayan
• Stollnitz Eric Joel
• Kopf Johannes

Classifications

• H04N23/698 Primary

  for achieving an enlarged field of view, e.g. panoramic image capture · CPC title

• G06T3/4038 Primary

  Image mosaicing, e.g. composing plane images from plane sub-images · CPC title

• H04N5/23238 Primary

  Electricity · mapped topic