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Nice (Score:5, Funny)
A fold-less centerfold :)
Re:Nice (Score:4, Funny)
It makes my blood run cold.
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Re:Nice (Score:5, Funny)
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Chorus {Repeat 3x} (Score:2)
...and it suddenly dawns on everyone exactly why Archon V2.0 failed in his childhood dream to become a lyricist...
It's okay, we're getting to the part of the thread that doesn't have any words:
"Naah-naah-na-na-na-na, Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-na-na-na-na-na-naaa...."
Wait, wait (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wait, wait (Score:5, Informative)
Won't this ruin my collection of photographs of creased paper?
Actually, no, it won't. Since the method uses different light sources to build a partial 3D model of the actual shape of the crease, your mere photographic creases won't be detected. You can breathe a sigh of relief.
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Won't this make my hobby of scanning folded pieces of paper harder?
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funniest thing I ahve read on /. in a long time.
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!unmodified (Score:3, Interesting)
In the article it says that they use an unmodified scanner, but later on they claim to control the lights of the scanner individually... how is this not modifing the hardware?
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Modification implies a hardware change. Using lights individually is simply a new way to use something. Does not imply a hardware change.
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Yeah, but I'm guessing there was no reason for the scanners to come with individual controls for each light before this technology
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Contrast control, avoiding light pollution in the sensors when scanning an undersized object, lamp longevity, improved support for scanning coarse film grain photographs, glare reduction on shiny objects...
I could think of a few.
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From a different FA: [newscientist.com]
great.... (Score:2)
Not really (Score:5, Insightful)
I was hoping they were using that 3D information to do something interesting to actually restore the image. They're not.
They're basically using rudimentary 3D information that they can get out of the scanner to determine that a crease exists. They then remove it with a simple infill algorithm, which is as basic as it gets (although it often works ok), and which you can find in most image editing software. It's no coincidence that the example image they use has a crease going over mostly similarly colored and low-detail areas.
So what they're doing is not an improvement to restoration, it's just an improvement to defect detection. Basically, it saves you having to tell the software where the defect to be fixed is, the fixing is the same quality as it's always been.
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Just use the Google method, of course there is the little problem of it being patented.
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So what they're doing is not an improvement to restoration, it's just an improvement to defect detection.
That's still helpful, isn't it? It seems to me that part of the problem with any algorithm to automatically fix photos is that you have to make sure the software knows the difference between a defect and a detail. If it detects what it thinks is a crease or a scratch, but it's really part of the image, it might edit out something you don't want it to.
If the crease destroyed image info . . . (Score:2)
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Other uses for 3D info (Score:5, Insightful)
The rudimentary 3D info can be used for improving all sorts of scans.
How about...
- Flattening a scan of a book (by the spine)
- Focusing an area that's raised (products like Focus magic [focusmagic.com] assume a section is all out of focus at the same level, whereas a map of the amount of lost focus is possible here).
- Using the above, scanning non-flat items.
- Scanning nearly-flat 3d surfaces.
Add a lens that can vary focus (based on the light differential) and you'd have a good 3D scanner for one side of a mostly-flat item, and a flatbed scanner that wouldn't lose focus on slightly-raised papers.
Book valley detection (Score:5, Insightful)
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Xerox did this already a few years back. And Google does it for their book scanning by projecting a laser grid and determining the 3d surface curvature of the book.
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Can't? We not?
The scanner itself uses a linear sensor that travels down one axis. Is there any compelling reason why the grid couldn't be projected similarly, one slice at a time, as the scanner moves?
Cuz, I mean: If the scanner can't see the whole grid at the same time, then there's no reason for it to all be present at the same time.
Re:Book valley detection (Score:4, Informative)
Just package that which Google has patented...
http://hurstassociates.blogspot.com/2009/05/article-patent-reveals-googles-book.html [blogspot.com]
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But, but, but... that would ruin my collection of photos of the valleys of female cleavage and buttocks!
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Why female?
Old Idea Rediscovered by HP (Score:2)
Applied Science Fiction was the first company to successfully market this as a 'dust and scratches' solution.
Same idea, taken to a new level. Now, I hope HP's management is smart enough to get out of the way and bring this to market. It should definitely sell a few more scanners.
Uses of multiple light sources (Score:5, Informative)
Multiple light sources offer some interesting options. A few years ago, someone modified a digital camera (I think a Canon PowerShot) to have four flash sources instead of the usual one. The camera would take four pictures in quick succession, one with each flash. This allowed better edge detection.
It was useful for applications like taking a picture of complex, dirty machinery (as under a car hood) and locating the edges, even where everything was roughly the same shade. It also helped when photographing very shiny objects, where the reflection from the flash was a problem. With each reflection from each flash unit in a different place, all reflections could be removed.
It was too specialized to become mainstream, though. That seems to be the fate of 3D from 2D systems. Good ones have been built [canoma.com], but most have been either discontinued or turned into very expensive products for specialized use.
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There will soon be much less need for 3D from 2D hacks, because there's a new technology coming that produces 3D pictures directly: Time-of-flight cameras [wikipedia.org]. Today they are really expensive but they're going to become much cheaper very soon. This is what XBox's Project Natal is based on.
This is all so ironic (Score:3, Funny)
since it will restore the upskirt I took of Carly Fiorina that I accidentally creased.
Re: accidentally creased (Score:2)
Aw, c'mon, admit it: the crease was deliberate because you were trying to spare your eyes and sanity!
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Other restoration applications? (Score:2)
I don't have any creased photos that I need to restore, but I've got boxes of matte finish prints that are a pain to scan. I wonder if a similar technique couldn't be used to automatically remove the scanning artifacts (little regularly-spaced crescent moon shapes) from those.
And exactly who gets this new feature...? (Score:2)
Do you suppose HP will be nice consumer-friendly guys and update their PrecisionScan software for previous scanner models? Nope: they'll roll this feature into software that'll only work with new scanners they wanna sell you. So, even though it doesn't REQUIRE new hardware, you can bet they'll figure out how to restrict it so that you still have to buy new hardware in order to use it.
And our local hotel ... (Score:2)
.. would like to patent the concept of removing the creases from a newspaper by ironing it under a dry towel.
[yawn] (Score:2)
Doesn't restore photographs (Score:2, Flamebait)
As a practitioner of traditional photography, I'm annoyed to no end by people who talk as if the concepts of "photograph" and "image" were one and the same. Photographs are unique physical objects that have mass. Speaking as if photographs are
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As a practitioner of traditional photography, I'm annoyed to no end by people who talk as if the concepts of "photograph" and "image" were one and the same. Photographs are unique physical objects that have mass. Speaking as if photographs are digital images is like speaking as if symphonies are .mp3 files.
That's stupid. A traditional print is made from a negative or slide, so by your purist philosophy, restoring the print isn't actually restoring "the photograph." Digital images are photographs and vice versa. What matters is the image, not the medium it is presented on.
Your idea of the photograph would be considered silly and outdated by the photographers of 50 years ago.
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P.S:
I probably shouldn't have used the term "purist philosophy" to describe your attitude towards photography in my previous post. Because it is neither pure or philosophy. A more apt description would be "nostalgic shortsightedness" or "ludditism."
The word "photography" at its root, means painting, drawing or writing with light. And "light" is really the key theme, the other root of the word describing "capturing" the light more than anything else. A digital image displayed on a screen that is never printe
Quite so... (Score:3, Interesting)
From the examples shown in the .PDF [hp.com] it seems that it is once again a case of a quick fix that only works on low-res and low detail photos, preferably in single color.
And for it to work at all, you would need a 2-lamp scanner.
Which are standard, but in high-quality print studios and other places that would do this kind of retouching by hand anyway in order to preserve or achieve better quality of the final product.
Re:Quite so... (Score:5, Insightful)
From the examples shown in the .PDF [hp.com] it seems that it is once again a case of a quick fix that only works on low-res and low detail photos, preferably in single color.
That doesn't seem like a terribly bad thing to me. If you were a professional looking for extremely high-quality results, then yes, you're going to want to spend a lot of time screwing around with things manually on each photo. Even if it's a largely automatic procedure, you'll probably still want to tweak the parameters a little for each photo, including things like brightness, contrast, and hue.
However, there's another real-world application for this sort of thing: someone like my grandmother scanning lots of old pictures that may have been folded, crumpled, or otherwise damaged. Even if it's not giving the highest quality results, if the results are at all better than not processing the photo, then it's probably fine. Without automatic quick fixes, people might either scan it and leave the damage, or decide not to scan it at all. Giving even barely passable results is an improvement.
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Which are standard, but in high-quality print studios and other places that would do this kind of retouching by hand anyway in order to preserve or achieve better quality of the final product.
Actually, most images are restored using digital techniques these days, because it can achieve better results than doing it by hand. You'd only do it by hand if you were talking about something like a historical artifact or unique artwork.
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Yeah, I was wondering about that too. Really, there is no good excuse to not be using PNG these days.