IMAGE ALTERATION TECHNIQUES

• US 20120081382A1
• Filed: 09/30/2010
• Published: 04/05/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 09/30/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Original Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Inventors: Lindahl, Aram, Chiu, Kelvin
• Granted Patent: US 9,466,127 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/581
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/00 2D [Two Dimensional] image generation

Abstract

Various techniques relating to the alteration of image data are provided herein. An electronic device capable of carrying out such techniques may include data processing circuitry configured to receive image data and detect the occurrence of a device operation event (e.g., an audio event, a motion event, a location event, or an image event, and so forth). The data processing circuitry may alter the image data using a full-quality version or a reduced-quality version of an image alteration effect associated with the device operation event, depending on currently available resources.

Claims

1. An electronic device comprising:

data processing circuitry configured to receive image data, detect the occurrence of a device operation event, and alter the image data using a full-quality version of an image alteration effect associated with the device operation event when currently available device processing resources exceed a threshold or using a reduced-quality version of the image alteration effect associated with the device operation event when the currently available device processing resources do not exceed the threshold;

wherein the device operation event comprises at least one of an audio event, a motion event, a location event, or an image event.

2. The electronic device of claim 1, wherein the data processing circuitry is configured to vary between using the full-quality version of the image alteration effect or the reduced-quality version of the image alteration effect as the currently available device processing resources change in real time.

3. The electronic device of claim 1, wherein the data processing circuitry is configured to alter the image data using the full-quality version of the image alteration effect associated with the device operation event after using the reduced-quality version.

4. The electronic device of claim 1, wherein the image alteration effect comprises at least one of a sepia effect, a black and white effect, a glow effect, a colored pencil effect, a thermal camera effect, an x-ray effect, a pop art effect, a comic book effect, a bulge effect, a dent effect, a twirl effect, a squeeze effect, a mirror effect, a light tunnel effect, a fisheye effect, a stretch effect, a water reflection effect, a spiral effect, a depth-changing effect, a brush-stroke effect, or a night-vision effect, or some combination thereof.

5. The electronic device of claim 1, comprising at least one of audio analysis logic configured to analyze an audio signal played back from audio data stored on the electronic device or to analyze an external audio signal received by an audio input device, a motion sensing device configured to detect motion experienced by the electronic device, a positioning device configured to detect a geographic position of the electronic device, or an imaging subsystem configured to detect one or more imaging properties, or some combination thereof;

wherein the data processing circuitry is configured to detect the occurrence of the audio event, the motion event, the location event, or the imaging event based upon data provided by the audio analysis logic, the motion sensing device, the positioning device, or the imaging subsystem, respectively.

6. A method, comprising:

receiving an image data onto an electronic device;

detecting a device operation event configured to trigger alteration of the image data using the electronic device;

determining an amount of processing bandwidth available to the electronic device;

applying either a full-quality version or one or more reduced-quality versions of an image alteration effect to the image data upon detection of the at least one device operation event using the electronic device to produce a first altered image, wherein applying either the full-quality version or the one or more reduced-quality versions of the image alteration effect comprises;

applying one of the one or more reduced-quality versions of the image alteration effect to the image data when the available processing bandwidth is below a first threshold; and

applying the full-quality version of the image alteration effect to the image data when the available processing bandwidth is not below the first threshold; and

displaying the first altered image on a display of the electronic device.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the full-quality version or the one or more reduced-quality versions of the image alteration effect are variably applied in real time in response to changes in the available processing bandwidth.

8. The method of claim 6, comprising, after the altered image data is displayed on the display:

applying the full-quality version of the image alteration effect to the image data when the available processing bandwidth is not below the threshold to produce a second altered image; and

encoding the second altered image to obtain an image file.

9. The method of claim 6, wherein applying either the full-quality version or the one or more reduced-quality versions of the image alteration effect comprises:

applying a first reduced-quality version of the image alteration effect to the image data when the available processing bandwidth is below the first threshold but not below a second threshold; and

applying a second reduced-quality version of the image alteration effect to the image data when the available processing bandwidth is below the second threshold.

10. A system comprising:

a first electronic device configured to capture image data using an image subsystem and to store the image data as an image file associated with one or more indications of one or more device operation events that occurred while the image data was captured, wherein the one or more device operation events comprise at least one of an audio event, a motion event, a location event, or an image event; and

a second electronic device configured to receive the image file stored by the first electronic device, to apply a full-quality version of an image alteration effect to the image data to produce first altered image data based at least in part on the one or more indications of the one or more device operation events associated with the image file, and to output the first altered image data for display on an electronic display associated with the second electronic device.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the first electronic device is configured to apply a reduced-quality version of the image alteration effect to the image data to produce second altered image data and to display the second altered image data on an electronic display of the first electronic device.

12. The system of claim 10, wherein the first electronic device is configured to apply either the full-quality version or a reduced-quality version of the image alteration effect to the image data to produce second altered image data and to display the second altered image data on an electronic display of the first electronic device, wherein the electronic device is configured to apply the full-quality version when currently available device processing resources of the first electronic device exceed a threshold and apply the reduced-quality version otherwise.

13. The system of claim 10, wherein the second electronic device is configured to apply a full-quality version of an analysis of an audio stream associated with the image file to determine a refined indication of one of the one or more indications of the device operation events.

14. An article of manufacture comprising:

one or more tangible, machine-readable storage media having instructions encoded thereon for execution by a processor, the instructions comprising;

instructions to receive image data;

instructions to determine at least one device operation event configured to trigger alteration of the image data;

instructions to determine an amount of processing bandwidth available to the electronic device;

instructions to apply a full-quality version of an image alteration effect to the image data to produce altered image data when the available processing bandwidth is above a threshold;

instructions to apply a reduced-quality version of the image alteration effect to the image data to produced altered image data when the available processing bandwidth is not above the threshold; and

instructions to display the altered image data on an electronic display.

15. The article of manufacture of claim 14, wherein the full-quality version of the image alteration effect is configured to be perceived to be of a higher quality than the reduced-quality version of the image alteration effect.

16. The article of manufacture of claim 14, wherein the full-quality version of the image alteration effect comprises vertex transformation calculations and the reduced-quality version of the image alteration effect comprises fewer vertex transformation calculations than the full-quality version of the image alteration effect.

17. The article of manufacture of claim 16, wherein the reduced-quality version of the image alteration effect comprises one-quarter or fewer the vertex transformation calculations of the full-quality version of the image alteration effect.

18. The article of manufacture of claim 14, wherein the full-quality version of the image alteration effect comprises an attenuated water ripple effect and the reduced-quality version of the image alteration effect comprises a sine-wave-based water ripple effect without attenuation.

19. The article of manufacture of claim 14, wherein the full-quality version of the image alteration effect comprises a series of frames of varying apparent subject depth and the reduced-quality version of the image alteration effect comprises fewer frames of varying apparent subject depth than the full-quality version of the image alteration effect.

20. The article of manufacture of claim 14, wherein the instructions to determine the at least one device operation event comprise instructions to apply either a full-quality version or a reduced-quality version of a device operation event analysis.

21. A method comprising:

receiving, in a first electronic device, an image file containing image data captured on a second electronic device, wherein the image file has associated therewith an indication of a device operation event that occurred when image data associated with the image file was being captured, wherein the one or more device operation events comprise at least one of an audio event, a motion event, a location event, or an image event;

applying, using the first electronic device, an image alteration effect based at least in part on the device operation event to the image data of the image file to obtain altered image data; and

displaying the altered image data on a display associated with the first electronic device.

22. The method of claim 21, comprising applying various image alteration effects based at least in part on the device operation event to the image data of the image file.

23. The method of claim 21, wherein the indication of the device operation event is stored in metadata associated with the image file.