Rsizr your images!
I found a website that absolutely blows my mind and I just have to share it with you! Being a photographer, website developer and lover of technology, Rsizr.com is practically a dream come true. “Okay, so what exactly is it already?”, you ask? It’s hard to answer that question in less-than-nerdy terms, but here goes my best attempt.
Rsizr.com is based on a new image resizing technology developed by Dr Ariel Shamir and Shai Avidan of the Efi Arazi School of Computer Science. To shrink an image down, instead of cropping out good data, or disproportionately squishing the content, it will find the less important data and remove only that specific content, thus leaving the important elements in tact, but effectively shrinking the image. A video demonstrating their technique amazed me earlier this year, but I never expected to be able to use it any time soon, let alone as a free web application!
I’ve prepared 4 example images to demonstrate the concept. For the demo, I chose a gorgeous bridal portrait from Nicole and Keith’s wedding at the Jack House in San Luis Obispo, CA on September 29th because I thought it would make a nice strong vertical.
Here’s the original image:
And after cropping in at the sides with Photoshop:
(Notice the flowers are missing on the left and some foliage on the right)
And simply changing the width of the image in Photoshop:
(This is a bad squished look! Some portrait subjects might appreciate this effect [or not], but Nicole certainly doesn’t need it!)
Now, the image that has been “seam carved” via Rsizr.com:
(This image looks very much like the original, but it’s now a stronger, narrower, vertical image – pretty cool!)
For a more thorough demonstration of the technology behind this concept, check out the YouTube video that brought this concept to light earlier this year:
More than anything, if you enjoy playing with photography and images, head over to Rsizr.com and try it out. It’s definitely a fun, and useful tool.
By the way, I found about Rsizr.com over at Photojojo which has all sorts of interesting, off-the-wall photography related ideas, tips, etc. Check it out.
