Scene Completion - a WOW from Carnegie Mellon

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University demonstrated a new technology in a paper (http://graphics.cs.cmu.edu/projects/scene-completion.pdf) which allows a digital photograph to be altered to either add or subtract elements.  What is interesting about the new idea is not the ability to edit (they describe it as "reconstructing" the photo - a very skilled user of Photoshop or some other programs like Graphic Converter can do that now - but the linkage to a group of photos. In this case they used Flickr as their database to find the photo which could be used to correct the image.  I suspect this will take a while to get to the market but the possibilities are quite interesting.   The example above was used to take out an annoying element in a photo which has an unwanted rooftop (lousy composition) and substitute a more scenic element.   All photographers get caught either a lot or a little in missing elements when they are composing a picture.  This technology would allow an after the fact do over.   The paper also shows some other examples where, Zeliglike, the technology can also be used for adding new elements to a photo - in that case they added a group of people to the Abbey Road Album's pictures.

The paper will be presented in San Diego in August, but if you are interested in digital photography you can read it before the conference.