onOne prepares seam carving app

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onOne prepares seam carving app
By Mike Tomkins
(Thursday, January 17, 2008 - 12:53 EST)

onOne Software has today announced its acquisition of Liquid Resize technology, a variant of the "content aware" seam carving technology that first appeared at SIGGRAPH 2007.

Shortly after the annual computer graphics conference took place last August, a video posted on the YouTube website brought the tech firmly into the public eye. Co-invented by Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir of Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, seam carving allows for resizing of images by adding or removing lines of pixels that span the width or height of an image. The path of these lines, known as seams, is determined by first analyzing the content of the image to determine the least important pixels. These are then discarded or new pixels interpolated, allowing the image to be rescaled in one or other dimension with minimal alteration to the subject matter. It's not a particularly easy idea to describe, but is simple to grasp when the effect is seen in person.

Among those who saw the YouTube video were the Viennese husband and wife team of Ramin Sabet and Irmgard Sabet-Wasinger. Impressed by the concept but unable to find any software with which to try it, the pair decided to create their own seam carving application. Dubbed "Liquid Resize", their C++ application was released free of charge for Windows and Linux users.

It is this second iteration of the technology, based on the formative work by Avidan and Shamir, which has today been acquired by onOne Software. The company plans to release a free public beta for both Windows and Mac OS X as a stand-alone application by the end of this month, with a Photoshop plugin variant to follow in the middle of the year. Planned pricing for the final release versions has not yet been disclosed.

As for the original inventors, shortly after the technology was first shown Avidan was hired by Adobe Systems Inc. as a Senior Research Scientist. Shamir, who was a guest scientist with MERL, remains a senior lecturer at Israel's Interdisciplinary Center.

Original Source Press Release:

onOne Software Announces Acquisition of Liquid Resize Technology

onOne Software adds ground-breaking image resizing and retargeting technology to its product offerings

Portland, OR – January 17, 2007 – onOne Software, Inc., announces today the technology acquisition of Liquid Resize which introduces a ground-breaking new way to resize images using a technique known as "seam carving" to reduce the distortion that typically occurs when manipulating the aspect ratio of an image.

“We're excited to have acquired this incredible new and unique image resizing technology to add to our award-winning line of Photoshop® plug-ins,” said Craig Keudell, president of onOne Software. “This new technology that allows users to maintain the original aspect ratio of a digital image will provide photographers and graphic designers alike unprecedented control when they resize or adjust the composition of their images.”

About Liquid Resize
Liquid Resize, a "content aware" image resizing application, was originally developed by the Vienna, Austria based husband-wife team of Ramin Sabet and Irmgard Sabet-Wasinger and is based on the work of Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir that made its first appearance in a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qadw0BRKeMk) released at Siggraph 2007.

Liquid Resize will allow users to resize an image without the traditional geometric limitations while minimizing any distortion that would typically result from changing the original aspect ratio of an image.

Availability and Pricing
A free public beta of Liquid Resize for both Windows and Mac OS X users will be available in late January 2008 as a stand-alone application from the onOne Software Web site. A Photoshop plug-in version of Liquid Resize is expected to be available in the middle of 2008. Pricing has not yet been announced for the final version of Liquid Resize that will be released later in 2008.

About onOne Software
onOne Software develops time-saving software solutions for professional and advanced amateur photographers. onOne Software solutions have been created to help photographers spend more time behind the camera taking pictures instead of the computer workstation. Such solutions include a wide range of easy-to-use plug-ins for Adobe® Photoshop®, Photoshop Elements and Photoshop Lightroom.

onOne Software delivers the highest quality software products to users by working with a broad range of industry experts and continue to develop in-house technologies for the photographic industry on both Macintosh and Windows operating systems. Founded in 2005, onOne Software is a privately held company located in Portland, Oregon. For additional information, visit www.ononesoftware.com or call 1-888-968-1468.

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© 2008 onOne Software. All rights reserved. Liquid Resize, onOne Software and the onOne Software logo are registered trademarks in the United States, and all are the property of onOne Software. Adobe and Photoshop are registered trademarks of Adobe Systems, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

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