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Photography website PetaPixel reports that researchers affiliated with Google and MIT have devised an algorithm that automatically removes reflections and obstructions from photographs, provided multiple frames are captured. Even more intriguing: this algorithm can also recover a reflected image.
Differences between the reflections/obstructions and the scene can be detected and extracted by comparing all the different shots, resulting in one clear photo of the obstruction-free background scene, and one clear photo of the extracted obstruction (e.g. a reflection or fence).
Now that's where things get even crazier: the algorithm is able to provide clear photos of what reflections show....
The MIT Technology Review provides more details about the algorithm:
Michael Rubinstein, a research scientist at Google who worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research while some of the work was conducted, says the basic principle behind the algorithm is the phenomenon of motion parallax....
Tianfan Xue, lead author of the paper and a graduate student at MIT, says that in addition to reflections on windows and chain-link fences, the algorithm can correct for a number of different kinds of obstructions on windows like raindrops or dirt.
Fairly impressive! Does this have the potential to become a new standard tool for photographers, or will this appeal primarily to cameraphone-toting consumers?
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:02PM
I can't think of anything more insightful to say than this is mind bogglingly amazing and also kind of scary.
I do remember talk about the new context aware fill algorithms, I think in Photoshop, and I found that almost as impressive. It's some seriously high level manipulation of information going on with these features. Yet again the number of things a human mind can do that a computer can't shrinks - although arguably they surpassing what a human could do without great difficulty here.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?