most recent 30 from superuser.com 2010-03-21T08:46:24Z http://superuser.com/feeds/question/67684 http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/rdf http://superuser.com/questions/67684/free-tool-to-extract-objects-from-photos 1 hasen j http://superuser.com/users/2938 2009-11-08T22:38:18Z 2009-11-10T00:17:14Z

<p>Is there a free tool that's <em>good</em> at extracting objects from photos? </p> <p>It has to work on linux</p> <p>For instance, extracting a person from a photograph.</p>

http://superuser.com/questions/67684/free-tool-to-extract-objects-from-photos/67718#67718 1 Hugh Allen http://superuser.com/users/13522 2009-11-08T23:45:52Z 2009-11-08T23:45:52Z

<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer%5Fvision" rel="nofollow">Computer vision</a> is a research area and a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI-complete" rel="nofollow">Hard Problem</a>. I don't think you should expect to find free software that will do a good job of it.</p>

http://superuser.com/questions/67684/free-tool-to-extract-objects-from-photos/67720#67720 2 DaveParillo http://superuser.com/users/10554 2009-11-08T23:50:52Z 2009-11-08T23:50:52Z

<p>Using <a href="http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php" rel="nofollow">imagemagick</a>, you can use a <a href="http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/channels/#mask%5Fbgnd" rel="nofollow">mask</a>, <a href="http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/transform/#edge" rel="nofollow">edge detection</a>, or a combination of the two techniques to cut shapes out of an image. The mask example in particular is very powerful if you have a picture with a known background.</p> <p>The <a href="http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/photos/#texture" rel="nofollow">add texture to image</a> example shows how to create a mask of a complex photo as part of the process, but it would work on a person also.</p> <p>On a photo of a pagoda, the command:</p> <pre><code>convert pagoda_sm.jpg -fuzz 10% -transparent white \ -alpha extract -negate pagoda_mask.png </code></pre> <p>creates</p> <p><img src="http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/photos/pagoda%5Fmask.png" alt="pagoda image mask"></p> <p>Which you can then use to cut the out everything that's not background in this case from the image.</p> <p>There are no perfect tools, free or no, that perform this task automatically on all images.</p>

http://superuser.com/questions/67684/free-tool-to-extract-objects-from-photos/68242#68242 1 Will http://superuser.com/users/602 2009-11-10T00:17:14Z 2009-11-10T00:17:14Z

<p>It's overkill (a full application as opposed to a tool), but you can do this with GIMP.</p> <p>The basic tutorials are <a href="http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/" rel="nofollow">here</a> and you can certainly make a script that will speed the process up.</p>