Image alteration techniques

• US 9,466,127 B2
• Filed: 09/30/2010
• Issued: 10/11/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 09/30/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Original Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Inventors: Lindahl, Aram, Chiu, Kelvin
• Primary Examiner(s): Faulk, Devona
• Assistant Examiner(s): Ge, Jin
• Application Number:
  US12/895,725
• Publication Number:
  US 20120081382A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,203 Days
• Field of Search: 345/581, 345/619, 345/473
• US Class Current: 1/1
• 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:

a data processing circuit to improve digital image altering capability of an electronic based device, the data processing circuit configured to;

receive image data;

detect the occurrence of a device operation event that comprises at least one of an audio event, a motion event, a location event, or an image event;

modify the image data with an image alteration effect to construct a first altered image data in response to the detection of the occurrence of the device operation event;

display the first altered image data on a user display in real-time responsive to the occurrence of the device operation event, wherein the first altered image data is constructed by using a full-quality version of the image alteration effect associated with the device operation event when currently available device processing resources of the electronic device exceed a threshold or a reduced-quality version of the image alteration effect associated with the device operation event when the currently available device processing resources of the electronic device do not exceed the threshold;

automatically apply, after generation of the first altered image data with the reduced-quality version of the image alteration effect associated with the device operation event, the full-quality version of the image alteration effect to the received image data to create a second altered image data after the currently available device processing resources shifts from not exceeding the threshold to exceeding the threshold; and

store the second altered image data.

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 and 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 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.

4. The electronic device of claim 1, further 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 further 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.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the motion event includes detecting rotational motion of the electronic device.

5. A method, comprising:

improving digital image altering capability of an electronic based device by performing at least the following;

receiving image data onto the 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, on the electronic device, in real-time a full-quality version or one or more reduced-quality versions of an image alteration effect to the image data upon detection of the device operation event to alter the image data, wherein applying the full-quality version or the one or more reduced-quality versions of the image alteration effect comprises;

applying 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 to construct a first altered image data;

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 to construct the first altered image data; and

displaying the first altered image data on a display of the electronic device;

automatically applying the full-quality version of the image alteration effect to the image data to create a second altered image data once the available processing bandwidth transitions from below the first threshold to not below the first threshold when the first altered image data is constructed with the one or more reduced-quality versions of the image alteration effect, wherein the image alteration effect is associated with the device operation event; and

storing the second altered image data.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the full-quality version and 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.

7. The method of claim 5, further comprising, after the altered image data is displayed on the display:

displaying the second altered image data; and

encoding the second altered image to obtain an image file.

8. The method of claim 5, 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 to improve digital image altering capability, the first electronic device configured to;

capture image data using an image subsystem;

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

construct a plurality of altered image data by modifying the image data with a plurality of altered image effects based on available processing resources and in response to detecting the one or more device operation events; and

a second electronic device configured to;

receive the image file;

display in real-time to the received image file, in succession and on an electronic display associated with the second electronic device, a plurality of different versions of the image file corresponding to the altered image data, wherein each different version of the image file corresponding to one of the altered image data is generated by applying a full-quality version of one of the image alteration effects to the image file based at least in part on the one or more indications of the one or more device operation events associated with the image file;

receive a user selection of one of the plurality of different versions of the image file; and

store a second image file based on the user selected version of the image file;

wherein the second image file is created by automatically applying the user selected image alteration effects based in part on the one or more device operation events.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the first electronic device is further configured to apply a reduced-quality version of one or more of the plurality of image alteration effects to the image data to produce a first altered image data of the plurality of the alter image data and to display the first altered image data of the plurality of the alter image data on an electronic display of the first electronic device.

12. The system of claim 10, wherein the first electronic device is further configured to apply either the full-quality version or a reduced-quality version of one or more of the plurality of image alteration effects to the image data to produce a first altered image data of the plurality of the alter image data and to display the first altered image data of the plurality of the alter image data on an electronic display of the first electronic device, wherein the first electronic device is configured to apply the full-quality version when the 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 apparatus comprising:

a user display;

a memory coupled to the user display, wherein the memory include instructions encoded thereon when executed by at least one processor, causes the apparatus to;

receive image data at the memory;

detect an occurrence of a device operation event associated with the image data, the device operation event including at least one of an audio event, a motion event, a location event, or an image event;

apply, in response to the detection of the device operation event, a full-quality version of an image alteration effect associated with the device operation event to construct a first altered image data when currently available device processing resources of the apparatus exceeds a threshold;

apply, in response to the detection of the device operation event, a reduced-quality version of the image alteration effect to construct the first altered image data when the currently available device processing resources are less-than-or-equal-to the threshold;

display the first altered image data on the user display in real-time;

automatically apply, after display of the first altered image data and after the currently available device processing resources are determined to change from less-than-or-equal-to the threshold to greater-than the threshold, the full-quality version of the image alteration effect to the received image data to create a second altered image data; and

store the second altered image data.

15. The apparatus of claim 14, wherein the instructions when executed by the at least one processor further causes the apparatus to:

apply the reduced-quality version of the image alteration effect to construct the first altered image data when the currently available device processing resources are less-than-or-equal-to the threshold but not below a second threshold; and

apply a second reduced-quality version of the image alteration effect to construct the first altered image data when the currently available device processing resources are below the second threshold.

16. The apparatus 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 apparatus 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 apparatus 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 apparatus of claim 14, further comprising a motion sensor, wherein the motion event includes the motion sensor detecting rotational motion of the apparatus.

20. A method comprising:

receiving, by an electronic device, image data;

detecting, by the electronic device, an occurrence of a device operation event associated with the image data, the device operation event including at least one of an audio event, a motion event, a location event, or an image event;

applying, by the electronic device and in response to the detection of the device operation event, a full-quality version of an image alteration effect associated with the device operation event to construct a first altered image data when currently available device processing resources of the electronic device exceeds a threshold;

applying, by the electronic device and in response to the detection of the device operation event, a reduced-quality version of the image alteration effect to construct the first altered image data when the currently available device processing resources are less-than-or-equal-to the threshold;

displaying in real-time the first altered image data on a user display of the electronic device;

automatically applying, by the electronic device, after display of the first altered image data and after the currently available device processing resources are determined to change from less-than-or-equal-to the threshold to greater-than the threshold, the full-quality version of the image alteration effect to the received image data to create a second altered image data; and

store the second altered image data within memory of the electronic device.

21. The method of claim 20, further comprising

applying, by the electronic device, the reduced-quality version of the image alteration effect to construct the first altered image data when the currently available device processing resources are less-than-or-equal-to the threshold but not below a second threshold;

and

applying, by the electronic device, a second reduced-quality version of the image alteration effect to construct the first altered image data when the currently available device processing resources are below the second threshold.

22. The method of claim 20, wherein the indication of the device operation event is stored in metadata associated with the image file.

23. The method of claim 20, wherein the motion event includes the motion sensor detecting rotational motion of the electronic device.