would have been smeared out in a normal
photograph. The results are striking: A photograph of a moving car, blurred beyond
brand or license plate recognition, becomes
a clearly defined Volkswagen with a readable plate. “We want to move toward more
direct measurement of visual appearance, to
what it is that people perceive in the
scene,” Tumblin said. “Features that are
visually important to human beings — the
edges of things, shadows, boundaries and
textures — will become machine readable.”
The result is a photograph that is essentially assembled out of data. And while
today’s photographer can edit a picture
with software such as PhotoShop, computational photography goes much further.
The “edits” that occur use information that
is actually in the scene; changes bring out
only what is really there. The picture also
can extend over time, not a single photograph but a photograph in movable pieces.
“It’s a good bet from all this,” said Tumblin,
“that the still photography/motion picture
distinction will one day vanish.”
If the camera’s newfound flexibility
resembles anything, it is a kind of hugely
enhanced artist’s brush. The computed
scene is one that can be startlingly lifelike,
or shaped into imagery that is as surreal as
a Dali painting. “There is always a tension
between realism and what appeals to a
human,” said Shree Nayar, T.C. Chang Professor of Computer Science at Columbia
University in New York. A frequent collaborator, Nayar has been probing computational techniques with Raskar and examining the potential for creating new types of
imagery. “This is a new medium altogether,” Nayar added. “Or one should say
that this is a new set of tools that allows a
professional or even an amateur photographer to edit after the fact. And yes, there is
a boundary here where you get into the
realm of art.”
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A fruitful imagination
Nayar, who praises Raskar for his ability
to see connections between seemingly disconnected fields, is hardly surprised that
this digital malleability should inspire the
researcher’s latent artistry. Raskar is a
habitué of art shows involving technology,
a lively scene in New York and Boston that
creates interactive displays involving computer graphics, cameras, sensors and projectors. A recent project was “Camera Non-
