Diffusion Curves: A Vector Representation for Smooth-Shaded Images | Hacker News Reader

Diffusion Curves: A Vector Representation for Smooth-Shaded Images

maverick.inria.fr

110 pointscurrywurst31 comments

Vectorizing bitmaps has been done for a long time. Even Flash even had a built in feature for this (see "trace bitmap") (I think even Flash 5 had this feature).

The significance of this is that it introduces a new algorithm for doing it. The core of the algorithm is diffusion filters.

What would be VERY interesting is to see the vector size difference for photorealistic pictures using Diffusion curves vs a typical linear or gradient picture.

Very impressive!

But ... Is it just me or is it just really inappropriate for a video demonstration accompanying an academic paper like this to begin with an unrelated 20-second commercial advertisement? Can INRIA really not host the demonstration somewhere that doesn't attach advertisements to their videos?

The link to the source code doesn't work. Did anyone figure out what the correct URL is? I'd love to play around with this.

Edit: Nevermind, I found it out myself: http://www.henrykorol.net/DiffusionCurves.rar

This seems very cool, but I'd really love to see a better comparison with gradient meshes.

Because gradient meshes seem far more "intuitive" and exact, exactly matching the artist's "intentions".

Whereas diffusion curves look very cool, but produce great complexity of gradients based on very simple curves -- almost too complex/unpredictable, I'd be worried, if I were an artist.

Of course, this seems easier to deal with than gradient meshes, at least how they exist today. I'd love to hear from artists who have tried both. I also wonder what other languages/concepts might be developed in the future towards this same end!

I'm an artist who's been using Illustrator as her main medium for about a decade. My reaction to this video is summed up in one word: WANT.

Gradient meshes are a royal pain in the ass. I never use them; if I want complex, smooth transitions, I currently do it by drawing overlapping blurred shapes. Meshes are overcomplicated IMHO.

The problem with gradient meshes is that they are 2D grids that run all the way through the shape. Thus you can't add control points on one side of your mesh without adding a bunch of useless ones across the whole length or width. Each mesh segment has to be a 4-sided bezier patch. If you try to gradient mesh a curved shape, the mesh lines run at very awkward angles, it's often better to start straight and bend it only after subdivision. Diffusion curves solve all of these problems, and seem to have no obvious downsides.

I don't see how they would match the artist's intention any less, quite the opposite. You can alter any small part of the image without compromising the overall structure, and you can control spline tension through the blur radius. The only thing I would say is missing is the ability to skew the blur to be more intense on one side of the diffusion curve, thus creating asymmetrical gradients.

In tools like Illustrator gradient meshes are flattened to images anyway when exported to PDF. So if a technique like this was implemented, it wouldn't change the workflow at all. In fact, I expect to see this in Illustrator in the next two versions.

I can't find a source but I think gradient meshes are only flattened to images to handle old or buggy postscript implementations. Postscript 3 can handle them natively.

This is significant: it allows one programmatically to convert any raster image into a full-color vector drawing. (Think converting JPEGs into similar-looking but much smaller SVG-like files with one click.)

Designers would LOVE to have this functionality built into applications like Inkscape and Adobe Illustrator.

Edit: changed "SVGs" to "SVG-like files" per vlasta2's comment (thanks vlasta2!). Also changed "equal-looking" to "similar-looking," because the automatically-generated color gradients may not precisely match the original.

Well, it certainly is impressive, but if I understood the video correctly, it actually requires different graphic primitives than SVG offers, so it would require a new format.

There is work underway in standardising this for SVG 2. But given the pace at which the standard process moves along it will still take some years :-)

I'm not sure that the resulting vector files will necessarily be "smaller". JPEG uses a decent compression algorithm, so its size is already pretty close to its actual information content (I'd wager within a factor of 2).

A while back I did some experimenting with compressing line graphics (handwritten music notation specifically) as both CCITTv4 (a bi-level raster compression algorithm) and SVG/PS via potrace (a tracer program), and the file sizes were similar (if anything favoring CCITTv4).

colanderman: I'm almost certain that the resulting vector files will be much smaller, because the algorithm substitutes subtle and complex color variations with much simpler color gradients that are only approximately similar and therefore have much less actual information content.

PS. Note that the resulting vector files are not just smaller, but the drawing elements contained in them are by definition resolution-independent, so all curves, diagonal lines, and gradients will render beautifully and without artifacts at all image sizes.

PPS. Also, note that music notation has no color gradients.

Yes, but I can achieve roughly the same effect (reducing information content) with JPEG by reducing the image size or reducing the quality parameter. That's not an advantage that's unique to this vector transformation, much less an advantage it has over JPEG.

Now it may be the case that "compressing" an image with this vector transformation results in less noticeable quality loss than a similar quality reduction with JPEG; but then I'd ask to see a comparison to more advanced image compression methods such as APT: http://intuac.com/userport/john/apt/

Re: PS: Yes, I understand that, and I'm purposefully ignoring it because that information would only help my argument. Vector drawing elements are richer than raster drawing elements and hence tend to contain more information (e.g. "exactly how sharp is that edge?).

And you will get artifacts going from raster->vector->zoom, because the raster->vector algorithm necessarily infers information that is simply not present (i.e. beyond the Nyquist boundary). While typically not apparent at 100% zoom, inaccuracies in this inference will become apparent once you zoom in (e.g. "that pixel was meant to represent a perfect square, not a circle!").

Re: PPS: I never claimed it did? Music notation is bi-level and smooth edges that makes it well-suited for vector tracing with a bi-level tracer e.g. potrace (and therefore -- again -- aiding your argument). Comparing a CCITTv4 bitmap -- a bi-level format -- to vector output from potrace -- a bi-level tracer -- would make no sense with color gradients.

In case it's not clear, I'm making the analogy CCITTv4 : potrace :: JPEG : the diffusion curve algorithm.

colanderman: Yes, I understand the analogy you're making.

Your example of a pixel "meant to represent a perfect square, not a circle" is accurate: that is one type of information that gets discarded with this approach. Another type of information that gets discarded is complex/subtle color gradients/variations.

Taken to the extreme, yes, this approach can make photos look like stylized comic-book drawings; but with sensible defaults, it produces resolution-independent images that look great (such as the example with the dolphin) even if those images actually contain LESS information than a JPEG at the same file size.

We'll have to wait and see...

Did you try to compress the resulting SVG files? Gzipping them will usually make them 3-4x smaller.

Yes -- IIRC this was with compressed PDFs generated from PostScript.

>Designers would LOVE to have this functionality built into applications like Inkscape and Adobe Illustrator.

Apparently people have been discussing how to implement it in Inkscape for some time. The fact that there's no way to actually implement them with SVG seems to be a hurdle.

Found this in a discussion on SVG 2. The automatic generation of the curves from images is the killer feature !

Damn, something exactly like this is one of the problems I've been playing with in my head for years, but never got very far on. Turns out it's been solved for four years. Very, very cool work.

Here's an implementation in WebGL

http://blog.calyptus.eu/seb/2010/11/webgl-not-just-for-3d/

Could this be used in image/video compression?

I'm not sure if it can be compressed in the time domain though.

Usually vector based formats compress very well in the time domain, since you only need to store the transformations. But without testing the code, I would be surprised if it is fast enough for something like 50 frames.

But to have 'organic' images you'd need to have a lot of small curves that would almost be like storing vector derivatives for pixels.

Convert the (x,y) curves to surfaces in the (x,y,time) domain and you should get a representation that is very fast to evaluate. With fast forward differencing, animating the curves would only need 6 adds per control point. If you are fine with "A Scanner Darkly"-style video it would work great!

BTW: Vector videos have been used to squeeze full-screen cinematics into a Super Nintendo: http://fabiensanglard.net/anotherWorld_code_review/index.php

It doesn't look like it performs very well in the time domain even without compression. If you pay attention to the very brief time when they talk about supporting animation, there's very clear "leaking" effect as the gradients shift. Maybe that could be corrected with very tightly controlled parameters, but tightly controlled parameters = more data + less margin for error.

I think this might be useful for 'very-low bit-rate' video quality, so you would get somewhat more pleasant gradients instead of blocks. It would be kind of amazing to do the smooth interpolation in time-domain too, so the resulting video would be frame-rate independent.

This seems amazingly simple (on face value). Anyone else want to have a go at doing up a prototype as a weekend project?

The moment the video was over, I was hitting up Adobe's bug/feature request form. Hell yeah.

This paper is from 2008. Where is this being used?

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