Multifunctional Environment for Image Cropping

• US 20130016122A1
• Filed: 07/12/2011
• Published: 01/17/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 07/12/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Original Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Inventors: Bhatt, Nikhil, Cherna, Tim
• Granted Patent: US 9,158,455 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/620
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2200/1637 Sensing arrangement for detection of housing movement or orientation, e.g. for controlling scrolling or cursor movement on the display of an handheld computer
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2203/04808 Several contacts: gestures triggering a specific function, e.g. scrolling, zooming, right-click, when the user establishes several contacts with the surface simultaneously; e.g. using several fingers or a combination of fingers and pen
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/017 Gesture based interaction, e.g. based on a set of recognized hand gestures interaction based on gestures traced on a digitiser G06F3/04883
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0346 with detection of the device orientation or free movement in a 3D space, e.g. 3D mice, 6-DOF [six degrees of freedom] pointers using gyroscopes, accelerometers or tilt-sensors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04845 for image manipulation, e.g. dragging, rotation, expansion or change of colour
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04883 for inputting data by handwriting, e.g. gesture or text
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04886 by partitioning the display area of the touch-screen or the surface of the digitising tablet into independently controllable areas, e.g. virtual keyboards or menus
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/00 2D [Two Dimensional] image generation
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2210/22 Cropping
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 3/40 Scaling of whole images or parts thereof, e.g. expanding or contracting
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 3/60 Rotation of whole images or parts thereof

Abstract

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, are described for combining the crop function with zoom, pan and straighten functions as part of a single cropping environment, such that a user can select a portion of an image for cropping, apply zoom, pan and straighten transformations to the selected image portion and then crop the transformed image portion in a single utility. In one aspect, the methods include the actions of receiving user input defining a crop region within a displayed image. The methods also include the actions of displaying a user interface including a cropping panel that is configured to display a subset of the image corresponding to the defined crop region. Further, the methods include the actions of receiving user input requesting to perform at least one of a zoom, rotate or translate operation on the crop region displayed in the cropping panel.

Claims

1. A method performed by one or more processes executing on a computer system, the method comprising:

receiving user input defining a crop region within a displayed image;

displaying a user interface including a cropping panel, the cropping panel displaying a subset of the image corresponding to the defined crop region; and

receiving user input requesting to perform at least one of a zoom, rotate or translate operation on the crop region displayed in the cropping panel.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising updating the cropping panel display in real time to show a result of the user requested operation.

3. The method of claim 1, where any of zoom, rotate or translate operations can be performed within the cropping panel without leaving the cropping panel view.

4. The method of claim 1, where said receiving the user input requesting to perform at least one of a zoom, rotate or translate operation on the crop region displayed in the cropping panel includes detecting a multi-touch gesture relating to the corresponding operation.

5. The method of claim 1, where said receiving the user input requesting to perform at least one of a zoom, rotate or translate operation on the crop region displayed in the cropping panel includes detecting a gyroscope or accelerometer sensitive gesture relating to the corresponding operation.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining that a request to rotate the subset of the image corresponding to the defined crop region would result in showing at least one edge of the image within the cropping panel; and

in response to said determining, performing the requested rotation of the subset of the image corresponding to the defined crop region concurrently with zooming there into, such that the rotated and zoomed subset of the image corresponding to the defined crop region can be displayed in the cropping panel without having to show any of the image edges.

7. The method of claim 1, where

said receiving the user input requesting to perform at least one of a zoom, rotate or translate operation on the crop region displayed in the cropping panel includes detecting a scaling gesture corresponding to a zoom operation and a rotation gesture corresponding to a rotation operation, and

the method further comprises transforming the crop region displayed in the cropping panel by using the zoom operation corresponding to the detected scaling gesture and the rotation operation corresponding to the detected scaling gesture.

8. The method of claim 1, where

said receiving the user input requesting to perform at least one of a zoom, rotate or translate operation on the crop region displayed in the cropping panel includes detecting respective gestures corresponding to two or more of the zoom, rotate or translate operations, and

the method further comprises

transforming the crop region displayed in the cropping panel by using an operation corresponding to one of the detected gestures that was detected first, and

excluding other operations corresponding to other of the detected gestures that were detected subsequent to the first one.

9. The method of claim 1, where

said receiving the user input requesting to perform at least one of a zoom, rotate or translate operation on the crop region displayed in the cropping panel includes detecting a scaling gesture corresponding to a zoom operation and a rotation gesture corresponding to a rotation operation, and

the method further comprises

transforming the crop region displayed in the cropping panel by using the zoom operation corresponding to the detected scaling gesture, and

transforming the crop region displayed in the cropping panel by using the rotation operation corresponding to the detected rotation gesture only in response to determining that a rotation angle associated with the detected rotation gesture exceeds a predetermined angle.

10. The method of claim 9, further comprising concurrently displaying a grid within the defined crop region and aligned with the cropping panel in response to determining that the rotation angle associated with the detected rotation gesture exceeds the predetermined angle.

11. The method of claim 1, where

said receiving the user input requesting to perform at least one of a zoom, rotate or translate operation on the crop region displayed in the cropping panel includes detecting a scaling gesture corresponding to a zoom operation and a rotation gesture corresponding to a rotation operation, and

the method further comprises

transforming the crop region displayed in the cropping panel by using the rotation operation corresponding to the detected rotation gesture, and

transforming the crop region displayed in the cropping panel by using the zoom operation corresponding to the detected scaling gesture only in response to determining that a scaling factor associated with the detected scaling gesture exceeds a predetermined scaling factor.

12. The method of claim 1, where the crop region has a pre-defined aspect ratio.

13. The method of claim 1, where the crop region has an arbitrary aspect ratio.

14. The method of claim 1, where the displayed user interface further includes a whole view panel, the method further comprising:

displaying the entire image in the whole view panel concurrently with said displaying the image subset corresponding to the defined crop region in the cropping panel.

15. The method of claim 14, further comprising displaying in the whole view panel an indicator of the cropped image contour.

16. A system comprising:

at least one display device; and

at least one processor and storage configured to store instructions that are operable, when executed by the processor, to cause the system to perform operations comprising;

displaying, in a first panel on the display device, a subset of an image in a window representing a portion to be cropped within the image,

receiving a user request to apply at least one other image transformation to the image subset displayed in the window,

transforming the image subset displayed in the window based on the received request, and

cropping the transformed image subset to obtain the cropped image portion.

17. The system of claim 16, where the at least one other transformation of the image subset includes a rotation, a zoom and a pan.

18. The system of claim 16, where the operations further comprise

concurrently displaying, in a second panel on the display device, a contour of the image portion to be cropped within the image overlaid on the image, and

linking relative position, orientation and size of the contour with respect to the image displayed in the second panel to mimic the transformations applied to the image subset in the window displayed in the first panel.

19. The system of claim 16, where the image outside of the window is covered by an opaque layer.

20. The system of claim 16, where the image outside of the window is covered by a translucent layer.

21. The system of claim 16, where the operations further comprise concurrently displaying in the first panel a grid within and aligned to the window to assist the user in providing rotation requests.

22. The system of claim 21, where the grid corresponds to a rule of thirds with respect to the window.

23. The system of claim 16, where the operations further comprise

determining that a request to rotate the subset of the image displayed in the window would result in showing at least one edge of the image in the window, and

in response to said determining, performing the requested rotation of the image subset in the window concurrently with zooming into the image subset in the window, such that the rotated and zoomed image subset can be displayed in the window without having to show any of the image edges.

24. The system of claim 16, where the operations further comprise

detecting respective gestures corresponding to two or more of the zoom, rotate or translate transformations,

transforming the image subset displayed in the window by using a transformation corresponding to one of the detected gestures that was detected first, and

excluding other transformations corresponding to other of the detected gestures that were detected subsequent to the first one.

25. The system of claim 16, where the operations further comprise

detecting a scaling gesture corresponding to a zoom operation and a rotation gesture corresponding to a rotation operation,

transforming the image subset displayed in the window by using the zoom operation corresponding to the detected scaling gesture, and

transforming the image subset displayed in the window by using the rotation operation corresponding to the detected rotation gesture only in response to determining that a rotation angle associated with the detected rotation gesture exceeds a predetermined angle.

26. A non-volatile computer storage medium encoded with a computer program, the program comprising instructions that when executed by one or more computers cause the one or more computers to perform operations comprising:

receiving user input defining a crop region within a displayed image;

displaying a user interface having at least two panels including a cropping panel and a whole view panel, the cropping panel displaying a subset of the image corresponding to the defined crop region and the whole view panel displaying the entire image; and

receiving user input requesting to perform at least one of a zoom, rotate or translate operation on the crop region displayed in the cropping panel.

27. The non-volatile computer storage medium of claim 26, where the operations further comprise updating the cropping panel display in real time to show a result of the user requested operation.

28. The non-volatile computer storage medium of claim 26, where any of zoom, rotate or translate operations can be performed within the cropping panel without leaving the cropping panel view.

29. The non-volatile computer storage medium of claim 26, where the operations further comprise displaying in the whole view panel an indicator of the cropped image contour.

30. The non-volatile computer storage medium of claim 26, where the operations further comprise

determining that a request to rotate the subset of the image corresponding to the defined crop region would result in showing at least one edge of the image within the cropping panel, and

in response to said determining, performing the requested rotation of the subset of the image corresponding to the defined crop region concurrently with zooming there into, such that the rotated and zoomed subset of the image corresponding to the defined crop region can be displayed in the cropping panel without having to show any of the image edges.

31. The non-volatile computer storage medium of claim 26, where

said receiving the user input requesting to perform at least one of a zoom, rotate or translate operation on the crop region displayed in the cropping panel includes detecting respective gestures corresponding to two or more of the zoom, rotate or translate operations, and

the operations further comprise

transforming the crop region displayed in the cropping panel by using an operation corresponding to one of the detected gestures that was detected first, and

excluding other operations corresponding to other of the detected gestures that were detected subsequent to the first one.

32. The non-volatile computer storage medium of claim 26, where

said receiving the user input requesting to perform at least one of a zoom, rotate or translate operation on the crop region displayed in the cropping panel includes detecting a scaling gesture corresponding to a zoom operation and a rotation gesture corresponding to a rotation operation, and

the operations further comprise

transforming the crop region displayed in the cropping panel by using the zoom operation corresponding to the detected scaling gesture, and

transforming the crop region displayed in the cropping panel by using the rotation operation corresponding to the detected rotation gesture only in response to determining that a rotation angle associated with the detected rotation gesture exceeds a predetermined angle.