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PhotoRoom automagically removes background from your photo – TechCrunch:
Meet PhotoRoom, a French startup that has been working on a utility photography mobile app. The concept is extremely simple, which is probably the reason why it has attracted a ton of downloads over the past few months.
After selecting a photo, PhotoRoom removes the background from that photo and lets you select another background. When you're done tweaking your photo, you can save the photo and open it in another app.
"My original vision comes from my time when I was working at GoPro," co-founder and CEO Matthieu Rouif told me. "I often had to remove the background from images and when the designer was out of office, I would spend a ton of time doing it manually."
[...] Downloads really started to take off around February. PhotoRoom now has 300,000 monthly active users. The app is only available on iOS for now. And if you're a professional using it regularly, you can pay for a subscription ($9.49 per month or $46.99 per year) to remove the watermark and unlock more features.
"Subscriptions are what works best on mobile for photo and video apps," Rouif said.
[...] Like VSCO, Darkroom, PicsArt, Filmic Pro and Halide, PhotoRoom belongs to a group of prosumer apps that are tackling photo and video editing from different ways. A generation of users who grew up using visual social networks are now pushing the limits of those apps — they look simple when you first use them, but they offer a ton of depth when you learn what you can do with them. And they prove that smartphones can be great computers, beyond content consumption.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday June 07 2020, @12:40PM (3 children)
Thanks. Any suggestions for a particularly difficult case? The photographer who took many of these 60 year old photos was notorious for not holding the camera steady. Most of his pictures have motion blur. I read of and tried a way to fix motion blur: fight blur with blur. It worked fairly well. Sharpened up the photo amazingly, at the cost of adding some heavy shadows. GIMP can motion blur in a straight line. But some of those photos, he moved the camera in an arc, and GIMP doesn't have anything for that.
Some other old photos have not faded evenly. There's a greenish tint to everything. White balance improved that, but it still looks too green. Will see what these tools can do with those photos.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2020, @01:14PM
Unless your 60 year old pictures are of Lena, then I don't think anything will work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2020, @03:34PM (1 child)
I've often times wondered about using machine learning to "fix" things like that. Obviously, you can't fix missing image detail, but you could potentially add image detail that looks like it belongs. Same goes for upsizing old cartoons. Machines should be very good at figuring out how to make those larger without losing detail, as there isn't necessarily much to begin with in many animation styles.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday June 07 2020, @04:18PM
Neural Networks Upscale Film From 1896 to 4K, Make It Look Like It Was Shot on a Modern Smartphone [soylentnews.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waifu2x [wikipedia.org]
This AI Clears Up Your Hazy Photos [youtube.com]
3D Style Transfer For Video is Now Possible! [youtube.com]
Finally, AI-Based Painting is Here! [youtube.com] (GANPaint/GANBrush)
The last one is an approach that lets you use a brush to insert objects into photographs, remove elements, or fill in gaps. I think it works on video too, e.g. take footage of a car driving around and replace the buildings with trees.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]