Liquid Scale "Smart Resizes" Your Pics

[Paul Daniel Ash]

It's hard to get a picture just right, especially when using your iPhone to take snapshots. People move around, you sometimes have to deal with distracting stuff in the background, and there's always the chance that some stranger just walks past at just the time when you're tapping the shutter button. Fortunately, a German startup has come up with an app that can move individual elements of a picture around, resize them, or remove them entirely.

Liquid Scale does an analysis of the image on your phone, and detects the subject (or subjects) as opposed to the background. It then allows you to manipulate the subject and background separately. Those inconvenient pictures of you with an ex? Totally sanitized with this app. Seriously, I tried to use the "content aware image resizing" function of the app: edge detection can be sketchy unless there's sharp contrast between foreground and background, but you can manually select areas with ease.

In addition to the cool National Enquirer style image editing where you get to remove people from a picture, the app is also useful for image resizing: keeping all the elements you want in a picture but crowding them together, with minimum distortion, in order to make a smaller image or change orientation from vertical to horizontal without losing anything. The way it all works is through what is called "seam carving:" following a high-gradient line to determine the edges of objects in an image and then "carving" them out of the background.

This is fairly sophisticated image processing for a mobile app, and while the quality of the result is not up to the level of the Content Aware Scaling function of Adobe Photoshop CS4, the price is also a lot lower - $1.99 on the App Store.

[blkcadi]

Very cool, sounds like a must have.

[danielharkins1991]

This could be very useful. Im always taking pictures with random people in.

[StealthBravo]

Im always taking pictures with random people in.

orly? lol


It does look like a cool app to try out

[Pitbull2o08]

orly? lol


it does look like a cool app to try out

lmao!!

[danielharkins1991]

lmao!!

HAHA. yeah i am. just random people around town.. thats how i normally spend my saturday.

[StealthBravo]

Sounds interesting. Just don't get arrested

[k.nitsua]

Time to bust out those pics with the ex!

[Rescuer]

awesome!

[tudtran]

That's awesome.

[adsonjustin]

sweet...

[thomax00]

Not working for me.

Tried actually selecting areas I wanted to erase; the app goes in for processing the pic and then ... NOTHING is happening

iPhone 3Gs running 3.1.2

[pakijawan]

has any one noticed what the pic above is actually doing lolzz,its kinda funny

[Cer0]

Hmmm, looks to me the person wanted the skinner person next to him.

[battlecrushr]

very nice gotta get thos

[tom28]

Hokey app - did you notice the girl that remains has inherited a new arm that isn't hers?
Good thing it wasn't a hairy guy in the middle!!
Also, there are still three sets of footprints!! LOL

[rhekt]

i bet its descent. but it'll just gather dust.

[tudtran]

That is mess up pictures. He edit out his big wife so he can be next to his skinny daughter.

[jayson9]

WOW!!! Now if they can only make an APP that can limit AT&T's involvement with the iPhone! Wait a minute.... that's right, it's called "Verizon"!

[Cer0]

WOW!!! Now if they can only make an APP that can limit AT&T's involvement with the iPhone! Wait a minute.... that's right, it's called "Verizon"!

It's called *sn0w. Meaning any of the sn0ws and you can go to T-Mobile. Well it is still taking out ATT's involvement.