Fun with Texture Transfers

Texture Transfer: Man as Rice One of the image processing technologies that Andrew Blake (of Microsoft Research) showed us during his Computer Science and Illusion presentation was image quilting, where bits of a texture are stitched together into a large, cohesive image.

A cool application of image quilting is texture transfer, where bits of a source texture are stitched together in a way that makes them look like a target image.

In the image to the right (from Andrew's presentation), the technique was used to transfer a rice texture onto a photograph of a face.  To create the image below, I transfered a texture from a Monet painting onto the photograph.

I did this using an Texture Transfer utility that I implemented in C# a few years ago. 

I've added a user interface so that you can try for yourself!

Texture Transfer: Gustav as Monet

You can pick a Source Texture (in this case, the Monet) and a Target Image (here, the photograph) and use it to perform your own texture transfers.

Click here to install the little application and try for yourself.  The app includes some top tips for getting good results. 

Post a link to your coolest results in the comments of this blog! 

My app uses ClickOnce deployment, so hopefully it should be a snap to install on any .NET-compatible PC.  I'm also about to post the code, which you're welcome to check out, optimize, improve upon, etc.