CS1674: Homework 2 - Programming

• [5 points] energyImage = energy_image(im) - to compute the energy at each pixel using the magnitude of the x and y gradients (equation 1 in the paper; sqrt((dI/dx)^2+(dI/dy)^2)). There are at least two ways to compute the gradient in each direction, i.e. the dI/dx and dI/dy. One of these is to use two of the filters we discussed in class. You can also explicitly compute the difference between pixels in the x and y direction by looping over pixels. However, don't use Matlab's imgradient function.
  The input im should be a nrows-x-ncols-x-3 matrix of datatype uint8, e.g. the output of imread on a color image. However, you need to convert it to grayscale before computing the gradients, using rgb2gray. The output should be a 2D matrix of datatype double.
• [provided] M = cumulative_minimum_energy_map(energyImage,seamDirection) - to compute minimum cumulative energy. The input energyImage should be a 2D matrix of datatype double. (It should be the output of the energy_image function defined above.). The input seamDirection should be the strings 'HORIZONTAL' or 'VERTICAL'. The output is a 2D matrix of datatype double.
• [provided] verticalSeam = find_optimal_vertical_seam(M) and horizontalSeam = find_optimal_horizontal_seam(M) - to compute the optimal vertical and horizontal seams. The input should be a 2D matrix of datatype double. (It can be taken from the output of the cumulative_minimum_energy_map function defined above). The output is a vector containing the row indices (column indices, respectively) of the pixels belonging to a horizontal (vertical, respectively) seam. For a horizontal seam, you have as many seam points as you have image columns, i.e. one row location for the seam per image column.
• [5 points] displaySeam(im, seam, seamDirection) - to display the selected type of seam on top of an image. The input im should be the result of an imread. seamDirection should be the strings 'HORIZONTAL' or 'VERTICAL'. seam should be the output of find_optimal_vertical_seam or find_optimal_horizontal_seam. The output should display the input image and plot the seam on top of it. Use one plot color for horizontal and another for vertical seams. To plot points on top of a displayed image, use imshow(im); followed by hold on; followed by plot(...). The origin of the plot will be the top left corner of the image. Note that for the plot, rows are the y axis and columns are the x axis.
• [10 points] Functions with the following interface:
  [reducedColorImage,reducedEnergyImage] = reduceWidth(im, energyImage)
  [reducedColorImage,reducedEnergyImage] = reduceHeight(im, energyImage)
  These functions should take as inputs a) a 2D matrix energyImage of datatype double and b) a nrows-x-ncols-x-3 matrix im of datatype uint8. The input energyImage should be the output of the energy_image function. The output must return 2 variables: a) a 3D matrix reducedColorImage same as the input image, of datatype uint8, but with its width or height reduced by one pixel; b) a 2D matrix reducedEnergyImage, of datatype double, the same as energyImage, but with its width or height reduced by one pixel. Edit: One way to do this, for a vertical seam, is by creating a new image, then going row by row, reading in the row from the original image, removing one pixel (which is part of your seam) from it, and putting that pixel-removed row in the new image. The solution is analogous for a horizontal seam. You can remove pixels in a vector by setting them to the empty vector [].

• Useful functions: imfilter, im2double, fspecial, imread, imresize, rgb2gray, imagesc, imshow, subplot;
• Use saveas(gcf, '[filename].png') to save your images. You can also save images directly without displaying them, by turning the 'visibility' of the figure in which they're shown 'off'.
• Be careful with double and uint8 conversions as you go between computations with the images and displaying them -- filtering should be done with doubles.

1. [5 points] Run your reduceHeight function on the provided prague.jpg and shrink the height by 100 pixels. Then run your reduceWidth function on the provided mall.jpg and shrink the width by 100 pixels. Also show what standard image resizing would do (use B = imresize(A, [numrows numcols])). Display the outputs, save them, and submit them.
2. [5 points] Display, save and submit (i) the energy_image function output for the provided images prague.jpg and mall.jpg, and (ii) the two corresponding cumulative minimum energy maps (M) for the seams in each direction (use the imagesc function).
3. [5 points] For the same two images, display, save and submit the original image overlaid with (a) the first selected horizontal seam and (b) the first selected vertical seam.
4. [15 points] Use your system with different kinds of images and seam combinations, and see what kind of interesting results it can produce. The goal is to form some perceptually pleasing outputs where the resizing better preserves content than a blind resizing would, as well as some examples where the output looks unrealistic or has artifacts ("failure cases"). Include results for at least three images of your own choosing. Include an example or two of a "bad" outcome. Be creative in the images you choose, and in the amount of combined vertical and horizontal carvings you apply. Try to predict types of images where you might see something interesting happen. It's ok to fiddle with the parameters (seam sequence, number of seams, etc) to look for interesting and explainable outcomes. If you have a large image, try imresize to resize the image to a small size to make the computations faster and allow you to try more ways of transforming the image. For each result, include the following things, clearly labeled (see title function):
   
   • the original input image,
   • your system's resized image,
   • the result one would get if instead a simple resampling were used (via Matlab's imresize),
   • the input and output image dimensions,
   • the sequence of enlargements and removals that were used (just the steps, e.g. remove 10 rows -> remove 20 columns -> remove 30 rows, not the intermediate image results), and
   • a qualitative explanation of what we're seeing in the output.