Semantic Colorization with Internet Images

Alex Yong Sang Chia, Shaojie Zhuo, Ping Tan, Raj Kumar Gupta, Siu Yeung Cho, Yu Wing Tai, Stephen Lin

Research output: Journal PublicationArticlepeer-review

75 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Colorization of a grayscale photograph often requires considerable effort from the user, either by placing numerous color scribbles over the image to initialize a color propagation algorithm, or by looking for a suitable reference image from which color information can be transferred. Even with this user supplied data, colorized images may appear unnatural as a result of limited user skill or inaccurate transfer of colors. To address these problems, we propose a colorization system that leverages the rich image content on the internet. As input, the user needs only to provide a semantic text label and segmentation cues for major foreground objects in the scene. With this information, images are downloaded from photo sharing websites and filtered to obtain suitable reference images that are reliable for color transfer to the given grayscale photo. Different image colorizations are generated from the various reference images, and a graphical user interface is provided to easily select the desired result. Our experiments and user study demonstrate the greater effectiveness of this system in comparison to previous techniques.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-8
Number of pages8
JournalACM Transactions on Graphics
Volume30
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2011

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design

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