In this paper, we present a new, improved seam carving algorithm. Seam carving efficiently removes pixels from an image to produce a retargeted image. It has proved popular with users and has been used as a component in many retargeting algorithms.
We introduce the visibility map, a new framework for pixel removing image editing methods. This allows us to cast retargeting as a binary graph labelling problem. We derive a general algorithm which uses seam carving operations for efficient greedy optimization of a well defined energy, and compare this with forward energy seam carving and shift map image editing.
We test this method with varying parameters on a large number of images, and present an improved seam carving algorithm which can demonstrably produce better results. We draw general conclusions about pixel removing methods for retargeting and motivate future directions of research.
Visibility Maps for Improving Seam Carving
A. Mansfield, P. Gehler, L. Van Gool and C. Rother
Media Retargeting Workshop
European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) 2010
[paper.pdf] (0.5 MB) [supplementary.pdf] (8.7 MB) [bibtex]
The slides of the presentation given at the workshop are available.
[slides.pdf] (1.9 MB)
You can download the code that we used to produce our results, which is available under a GNU General Public License. The implementation is written in MATLAB and C++ (with a MEX interface).
Please note that all code is provided for research purposes only. For any questions about the code, please contact Alex Mansfield.
[code.zip] (0.4 MB) [images.zip] (10.3 MB)