It’s not everyday that you find pure technology posts on TechCrunch. Now they have found something pretty interesting though. I think it is best described by calling it picture resizing on steroids.
What it basically does is determine the less important parts of the picture. Then when you resize the thing it either fills these parts or removes those parts appropriately. This is somewhat similar to what happens when you resize your browser in a full width designed page.
In the past I’ve found myself applying the technique they describe quite often in Photoshop. Them doing it automatically is pure bliss though. My initial doubt was that the technique would often not work, because the “important” part of the picture largely depends on how you want to use it. Fortunately they have provided some manual indicators to deal with this.
All in all it looks like a great technique. Some comments at TechCrunch about how this is going to revolutionalize the web seem complete nonsense to me though.
Great work and indeed, hope to have it in Photoshop soon!
Author
Thierry Schellenbach