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LIRE v0.6 released: New Image Features

The new release contains three additional features: (i) Tamura texture features, (ii) Color and Edge Directivity Descriptor (CEDD) and (iii) a configurable color histogram implementation. While the last one was integrated for comparison only the other two provide additional improvements, especially the CEDD feature. Furthermore a FastMap implementation was included in the release for optimization of the indexing process in a later release. Also some bugs were fixed in the MPEG-7 EdgeHistogram descriptor provided in the cbir-library jar file and in color-only search. Note that due to the increased number of features the extensive document builder, which extracts all available features, needs significantly more time for extraction than in the last release.

Links:

• Download Lire & LireDemo

Lire SVN build for Java 1.5

Due to requests I took some time and built a Java 1.5 version instead of the 1.6 versions. A simple compile with 1.5 wouldn’t help as I use the swing layout classes of NetBeans (now integrated in Java 1.6), so imports have to be re-adjusted and the library has to be added. Furthermore I created an explicit build target in Caliph to create a 1.5 version of the cbir jar file. This snapshot works fine with MacOS (as far as I’ve heard) and on Windows.

Files:

• liredemo-svn-2008-05-29-jdk1.5.tar.bz2 [670k]
  
• liredemo-svn-2008-05-29-jdk1.5.zip [884k]
  

Lire development: a big next step ..

While it has been quiet for some time around Lire, recently development has been pushed forward. I switched to SVN for development and integrated simple RGB color histograms as a feature for comparison with the MPEG-7 features. Savvas Chatzichristofis (or on facebook, his image search engine) contributed the CEDD feature, which works great! Marko Keuschnig and Christian Penz contributed implementations for the Gabor texture feature and the Tamura texture features, where the latter is already in the SVN. I also integrated the new features in LireDemo. A new version - already compiled - can be downloaded here: liredemo-svn-2008-05-29-jdk16.tar.bz2 Note that Java 1.6 is required.

NetBeans 6.1 Released

The new NetBeans IDE 6.1 has been released 2 days ago. Changes are more incremental than fundamental, but it features now support for JavaScript and code completion for JavaDoc. Furthermore support for MySQL has been added. Release notes can be found here.

NetBeans 6.0 RC 1 Released

Final release of the Java IDE NetBeans 6.0 is planned in late 2007. However the release candidate 1 has been released. NetBeans 6.0 offers tons of features for Java SE, EE and ME developers as well as a D’n'D Swing editor, BPEL support, graphical SQL editor, one click webstart release and so on. I’ll try and report soon.

Content Based Image Resizing (GPL, Java): Update to v4

I’ve just uploaded a new version of the seam carving application (v2 v3 v4). There is a performance increase and the result should be smoother now. It’s either available as Java Webstart or as compiled jar file to start the Swing GUI. Sources are included, license is GPL, Java 1.6 needed.

• Java Webstart: ImageSeams
• Download binaries & source v2 (43k)
• Download binaries & source v3 (Java Swing GUI App, 54k)
• Download binaries & source v4 (Java Swing GUI App): SeamCarving-v4.zip (66K) or SeamCarving-v4.tar.bz2 (57k)
• Download Windows binary (Java Swing GUI App with Windows launcher, Java 1.6 needed, 243k)

What does this application do?

ImageSeams accepts JPG and PNG images as input and re-targets the image. This means it cuts out the not interesting parts of an image automatically. The application is based on the findings of this group described in this paper. A visual introduction of the original application is given in this video.

Changes:

• Bugfix: Bug fixed in seams backtracking, results are smoother now
• Feature: Image can now be scrolled
• Feature: About dialog showing version
• Change: Speed up in image repaint: ~30% ~50% performance gain
• Change: Icons for seam carving replaced
• Chang: Animation is now smoother

Small tutorial:

• Load an image with the leftmost button (jpg and png will work fine, try to use images not bigger than 800×800 for a start)
• Set the preferred size using the spinners (Do not forget to hit enter if you type it in, otherwise Java won’t recognize it)
• Hit the 2nd button in the tool bar and observe the effect
• Tryout the image brushing (click and drag on the image) to retain certain parts (e.g. faces) within the image
• Switch to the remove brush if you want to remove parts of the image before resizing.

Content Based Image Resizing: Webstart GUI

To allow easy tryouts I just uploaded a Java Webstart version of the ImageSeams GUI tool. You need to have Java 1.6 installed, then you just click here and the application should start right away.

• Java Webstart ImageSeams

If you just want to know what this is all about … here is a short flash demo showing the brush and resize trick.

First steps are:

• Load an image with the rightmost button (jpg and png will work fine, try to use images not bigger than 800×800 for a start)
• Set the preferred size using the spinners (Do not forget to hit enter if you type it in, otherwise Java won’t recognise it)
• Hit the 2nd button in the toolbar and observe the effect
• Tryout the image brushing (click and drag on the image) to retain certain parts (e.g. faces) within the image
• Switch to the remove brush if you want to remove parts of the image before resizing.

Content Aware Image Resizing: GPL Implementation

Just for the proof of concept I’ve implemented parts of the Content Aware Image Resizing algorithm (presented by Avidan, S. & Shamir, A.) shown here (covered also on Slashdot, Techcrunch, …) in Java (GPL). Currently image size can only be reduced.

The images on the left show results from the implementation. The source as well as the binaries can be downloaded here:

• Source & Binaries (Java 1.6 needed, ~30k): SeamCarving.tar.bz2SeamCarving.zip
• Windows Executable (Java 1.6 needed, ~200k): SeamCarving-Win-Bin.zip
• The most current implementation can be found here.

I’ve furthermore put up a GUI tool for loading and ‘carving’ images. It allows to mark areas for retaining (red brush) as well as for removal (green brush). The screenshot shows the application with area already colored. Download is here:

• Source & Binaries (Java 1.6 needed, ~65k): ImageCarving-GUI.zip

LIRe 0.5.4 Released

In Lire 0.5.4 some bugs were fixed: The scalable color descriptor (color histogram) was not compliant to the MPEG-7 standard, which is now fixed. The color only search was changed to use the color layout descriptor and a bug in the edge histogram descriptor was hunted down.

Note that you have to re-index your files: Your old index cannot be used with the new version as 2 descriptors have changed. Furthermore all binary files have been compiled with Java 6.0. So if you need a Java 1.5 version you’ll need to recompile yourself (ant build file is included) and include the swing layout class library from NetBeans.

The LireDemo GUI application has also been updated: A new function for creating image mosaics has been introduced and the indexing of digital photos is now faster than ever as only the EXIF thumbnails - if available - are used instead of the whole image.

Go to the LIRe page for download links and further information.

Caliph & Emir v0.9.25 released

Caliph & Emir 0.9.25 is mainly a maintainance release: There were some bugs in the content based image retrieval classes. Scalable Color descriptor extraction was fixed and yields now the same results as the MPEG-7 reference software. Furthermore ppm and bmp images are now supported. Note that Java 6.0 is required for the binary version and 1.5 for building it yourself.

The Scalable Color Descriptor was fixed: Now it matches the XM implementation (thanks to Fabrizio Falchi and Bastian Hoesch). EdgeHistogramImpl has also been updated according to a bug report & patch by Bastian Hoesch. Furthermore the DominantColor class was adapted based on suggestions by Janine Lachner. New feature is the support for ppm and bmp images.

Binaries, source and an installer for windows can be downloaded on sourceforge.net.