computervision

Emma Alexander Northwestern AI for Astronomy

Researchers Unveil Novel AI Algorithm That Can Unblur the Cosmos

While vital to humanity's existence on Earth, the planet's atmosphere is a major nuisance for astronomers trying to learn more about what's beyond Earth. The cosmos would be much easier to study without the pesky atmosphere. Researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago and Tsinghua University in Beijing have unveiled a new artificial intelligence-powered approach to cleaning up images captured by ground-based telescopes.

AI ‘Deep Nostalgia’ Images Have Deep Limitations

News outlets and social media accounts have been overrun with old photos that have been animated with MyHeritage’s “Deep Nostalgia” feature, an AI-based deep learning algorithm licensed from Israeli-based D-ID.

Canon’s New App Culls Photos with Artificial Intelligence

Canon has announced the Photo Culling app, the company's new software for iOS that is built on a newly-announced proprietary artificial intelligence. Canon advertises its new app as a "digital photo assistant" to help select your best images based on four key parameters.

This AI Generates Photos Using Only Text Captions as a Guide

Researchers at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) have created a machine learning algorithm that can produce images using only text captions as its guide. The results are somewhat terrifying... but if you can look past the nightmare fuel, this creation represents an important step forward in the study of AI and imaging.

This AI Automatically Removes Harsh Shadows from Your Portraits

A team of computer scientists from Google, MIT, and the University of California, Berkeley have created an impressive AI-powered "shadow removal" tool that can realistically remove harsh shadows from portraits, while leaving natural shadows intact. The results are impressive.

This AI Creates Detailed 3D Renderings from Thousands of Tourist Photos

A team of researchers at Google have come up with a technique that can combine thousands of tourist photos into detailed 3D renderings that take you inside a scene... even if the original photos used vary wildly in terms of lighting or include other problematic elements like people or cars.

Using AI to Colorize and Upscale a 109-Year-Old Video of New York City to 4K and 60fps

After the success of his last attempt at using AI to upscale a classic short film to 4K and 60fps, YouTuber Denis Shiryaev decided to take this experiment one step further. He took this well-known film of New York City in 1911, and used publicly available neural networks to upscale it to 4K, increase the frame rate to 60fps, and colorize the video.

Pixelmator’s New ML Super Resolution Feature is a Real Life ‘Enhance!’ Tool

Pixelmator Pro just released a new tool called "ML Super Resolution": a machine-learning-powered feature that "makes it possible to increase the resolution of images while keeping them stunningly sharp and detailed." In other words, the real-world equivalent of all those movies where someone yells "Enhance!" at their computer screen.

Researchers Developed an AI that Can ‘Relight’ Portraits After the Fact

A group of researchers and engineers from UC San Diego and Google have trained a neural network to "relight" portraits after the fact "according to any provided environment map." In other words: their system can take any photo and adjust the lighting at will—including the direction, temperature, and quality of the light.

Apple Acquires AI Tech That Can See a Photo’s Aethetics

Apple has quietly acquired a new French technology startup, Regaind, which specializes in AI and computer vision for analyzing photos. Apple's Photos app is already able to search through images using keywords like "dog" or "tree" and pull out the relevant images, but this acquisition may indicate further AI developments for the app.

EyeEm Let an AI Pick Their Top Photos of 2016, It Chose These

What's your computer's favorite photo? It seems like a ridiculous question, but EyeEm recently asked their AI something similar. Since no single human could possibly go through the millions of images uploaded to their service last year, EyeEm let their special EyeEm Vision AI pick the Top Photos of 2016.

Adobe is Working on Automatic Distraction Removal Technology

Adobe's Content Aware Fill makes it easy to remove distracting elements in photos using Photoshop, but soon you may not have to. Computer vision scientists at Adobe and Princeton are working on a new technology called "distraction prediction" that can automatically find and remove distracting elements from photos.

A Script for Easily Finding Lightning Strike Stills Inside HD Video

Photographer Saulius Lukse recently decided to try his hand at shooting video to capture photos of a lightning strike rather than using a special trigger for still photos. The technique worked well, and is rather efficient thanks to a special script Lukse wrote to quickly find frames containing lightning.

New Algorithm Can Automatically Remove Window Reflections from Photos

Photographers often use products such as the Lens Skirt when shooting through windows in order to reduce or remove reflections. Thanks to advances in computer algorithms, those physical tricks may soon find themselves alongside suitable software solutions.

Scientists at MIT have created an algorithm that can automatically remove reflections from photos that were taken through windows.

How Humans Are Teaching Computers To See and Understand Photos

Three year old children can make sense of what they see in photos and describe them to us, but even the most advanced computers have historically had difficulties with that same task. That's quickly changing though, as computer scientists are developing powerful new ways to have computers identify what a photograph is showing.

The video above is a new TED talk given by Fei-Fei Li, a Stanford professor who's one of the world's leading experts on computer vision. She talks about her revolutionary ImageNet project that has changed how computers "see."

Google+ Now Using ‘Computer Vision’ to Identify and Index Photos by Content

Google I/O brought with it a lot of exciting updates for Google+, not the least of which were a slew of automatic improvements to Google+ Photos including Auto Highlight, Auto Enhance and Auto Awesome. But the updates didn't stop when I/O ended last Friday.

Today, Google's Search blog announced that the company has started implementing some impressive technology that will allow you to search for your photos based on what they contain visually, even if there's not a tag in sight.