Snapfish Lab
Encyclopedia
Snapfish Lab is a web portal and application framework that HP Labs
provides to showcase some of its imaging research and to solicit feedback from users and the imaging research community.
user credentials they can use the tools on their own photograph collections. A discussion forum allows users to give feedback on their experience.
, the research and advanced development division of Hewlett-Packard
.
HP Labs
HP Labs is the exploratory and advanced research group for Hewlett-Packard. The lab has some 600 researchersin seven locations throughout the world....
provides to showcase some of its imaging research and to solicit feedback from users and the imaging research community.
Overview
The site contains a series of new experimental imaging tools. A set of sample photographs allow the user to try the tools without registering. If users log on with their SnapfishSnapfish
Snapfish is a web-based photo sharing and photo printing service that is owned by Hewlett-Packard. Members can upload files for free, and are given unlimited photo storage.- History :...
user credentials they can use the tools on their own photograph collections. A discussion forum allows users to give feedback on their experience.
Company Structure
Snapfish Lab is a service of HP LabsHP Labs
HP Labs is the exploratory and advanced research group for Hewlett-Packard. The lab has some 600 researchersin seven locations throughout the world....
, the research and advanced development division of Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
.
Imaging Tools
The experimental imaging tools provided by the site are:- Poster Creator allows users to combine multiple photographs into a single large sheet of paper. An automatic algorithm, Blocked Recursive Image Composition, automatically arranges the photographs. The user can choose between alternate automatic layouts and fine-tune the results by swapping photographs or cropping them.
- Auto Crop uses face detection and a proprietary saliency analysis algorithm to find the most important parts of a photograph. It then uses aesthetic rules to crop the photograph to increase the proportion of the image that is filled with salient content while avoiding violating rules of composition.
- Note Capture takes a photographs of some text or graphics on a page or a whiteboard and fixes the perspective distortion to produce the original rectangle.
- Clear Note extends Note Capture by using a watershed image segmentation algorithmWatershed (algorithm)A grey-level image may be seen as a topographic relief, where the grey level of a pixel is interpreted as its altitude in the relief.A drop of water falling on a topographic relief flows along a path to finally reach a local minimum...
to separate out the foreground writing from the background surface. This allows it to convert the background to white, producing an image that is more suitable for printing. - Fisheye Visualization presents an interactive view of an album of photographs as an array of images where the sizes and positions are distorted as if a fisheye lens were following the cursor. This gives the user an overview of the entire album as small thumbnails while giving them a movable magnified view of some photographs.
- Automatic Horizon Alignment analyzes a photograph to look for a near-horizontal line. If it finds one it rotates the photograph slightly to make the line perfectly horizontal. This is intended to straighten snapshots in which the horizon is not level
See also
Other corporate research websites include:- Google LabsGoogle LabsGoogle Labs was a page created by Google to demonstrate and test new Google projects. Google calls Google Labs,Google also uses an invitation-only phase for trusted testers to test projects including Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Wave and many of these have their own "labs" webpages for...
- AlphaWorksAlphaWorksalphaWorks is IBM's "emerging technology portal". It is a web community for early adopters to preview and collaborate on prototype technology from IBM Research labs....
- Yahoo! NextYahoo! NextYahoo! Next is a showcase of some of Yahoo!'s newest and upcoming projects. It is essentially an incubation ground for future Yahoo! technologies in their beta testing phase, and a chance for the Yahoo! community to interact and have a say on how upcoming products are designed and fine tuned. Each...
- Windows Live Betas
- News LabNews LabNEWS lab was the research and development section of the NEWS.com.au website, based in Sydney, Australia.- Overview :The lab lets users comment and rate a number of internet products being developed by NEWS.com.au...