Bitmaps in WPF - give watermarking effect and then recover images individually - c#

I am working on a project where I need to play with two bitmaps. I am putting them in a grid one over the other with reduced opacity (to give a watermark effect).
I am rendering the grid to a bitmap using RenderTargetBitmap and saving the bitmap to a file.
Now my requirement is to load the rendered bitmap again and recover the original pictures separately. Is there any way to recover the original images again. I am not able to think any algorithm to implement this.
My aim is to give a watermarking effect and then recover the images individually.

No. The information is lost during "flattening" of the image.
You need to save both images and information about their properties (position, opacity) into single file. And restore it on load.

If your goal is to simulate watermarking and allow later 'dewatermarking', then assuming that you have your watermarking bitmap present at decoding time, you probably can do that. Sure you cannot use your initial approach - just simple merging of two layers is not reversible.
You need to use some reversible transformation, like rotating source image pixel RGB values vector, using watermark image pixel RGB values as parameters. While dewatermarking you just use negative values from watermark image.
Well, RGB vector is not ideal - you can go out of RGB space while rotating it. Probably you can find color space (or some other transformation in RGB space), better suited to your goal.
(English is not my first or even second language, thereby I apologize if you can't understand my idea - just ask over.)

Why don't you try to make it two layers of bitmap?

i wonder if you can use TIFF format, where you can store multiple images. that way on display you can choose to show with/without watermark.

Related

How to check if bunch of jpg files are black with C#

So I have a program that scans cameras from multiple sources and takes a thumbnail of their view at a certain time and saves them as jpg's.
I would like to now scan these through my C# program and check if any of the created jpg files are completely black (either completely obstructed, or no signal in this case).
I am wondering what would be the best way of solving this problem. Not a color depth issue.
Thanks!
Use the GetPixel(x,y) function to check color at x,y location. You can iterate through the whole image and if they're all black then it's black. You can also check if majority of pixels are gray / black - if so then it's probably a very dim image.
Load picture.
Go through all pixels and check their RGB value.
If you find all below a certain threshhold - assume picture is black.
Beware: you should likely ignore single pixels not being black. Sensors are not perfect. Stuck pixels are a known phenomenon.

How can I resize an image in C# while retaining high quality?

I found an article on image processing from here: http://www.switchonthecode.com/tutorials/csharp-tutorial-image-editing-saving-cropping-and-resizing Everything works fine.
I want to keep the high quality when resizing the image. I think if I can increase the DPI value I can achieve this. Does anyone know if this is possible? And if so, how can I implement it in C#?
For starters, it's worth pointing out that there are two general categories of images; vector [e.g. SVG, WMF, Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw Graphics] and bitmap (also called raster) images [e.g. Bitmap, JPEG and PNG Images].
Vector images are formed from a series of mathematical equations and/or calculations. Bitmap images, on the other hand, are made up of individual dots (pixels) each corresponding to a particular feature on the object the image is taken of.
If it should happen that you want to resize an image, the first thing to consider is if it is a bitmap or vector image. By virtue of the fact that vector images are obtained from calculations, they can be perfectly resized without losing any detail. The case is different for bitmap images. Since each pixel is independent of the other, when you desire to resize it, you are simply increasing or decreasing the source to target pixel ratio.
So in order to double the size of a vector image, simply multiply the target dimensions by two and everything comes out all right. If you should apply the same effect on a bitmap, you are actually increasing each source pixel to cover four pixels (two rows of two horizontal pixels).
Of course, by applying interpolation and filtering, the computer can "smooth" out the edges of the target pixels so they seem to blend into each other and give the appearance of a reasonably resized image but this output is never the same as resizing a vector image; vector images resize perfectly.
You also mentioned DPI in your question. DPI is essentially the number of pixels that correspond to an inch when the image is printed not when it is viewed on a screen. Therefore by increasing the DPI of the image, you do not increase the size of the image on the screen. You only increase the quality of print [which needless to say depends on the maximum resolution of the printer].
If you really desire to resize the image and the image is a bitmap, as a rule of thumb, do not increase the size beyond 200% of the original image's size else you'll lose the quality.
You can see this answer for code to resize bitmap images.
To see a sample vector image, go to this link.
Note Try zooming in and out of the image to see how well it resizes.
A typical bitmap are the StackOverflow sprites. They do not keep their quality resized.
Further Reading
Vector Graphics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_image
Bitmap Graphics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitmap_image
Simply If the original image is smaller then the re-sized image then there is hardly anything you can do. Rest is a research problem.
This would only be possible if it's a vector graphic. Look into SVG. Otherwise, I think you might need Silverlight or Flex for that part.
What you're asking isn't really possible. You can't enlarge an image while maintaining the same quality.
If you think about an image as a mapped array of pixels (literally, a "bit-map"), this makes sense. The image is saved with a fixed amount of data, and that's all you have to work with when you resize it. Any examples to the contrary (like TV shows, as suggested by one of the comments) are purely fictional.
The best that you can do is set the InterpolationMode property of the Graphics object you're using to do the resizing to "HighQualityBicubic", which is the highest quality smoothing algorithm supported by GDI+ and in fact by every major graphics package on the market. It's the best that even Adobe Photoshop has to offer. Essentially, interpolation means that the computer is calculating the approximate value of the new pixels you're adding to make the image larger from the relative values of neighboring pixels. It's a "best guess" method, but it's the best compromise we've come up with yet.
At the very least, the resulting images won't have "jaggies" or rough, pixelated lines.
Sample code:
Graphics g;
g.InterpolationMode = Drawing.Drawing2D.InterpolationMode.HighQualityBicubic;
// ... insert the rest of your code here
Beyond that, it's worth noting that GDI+ (which the .NET Framework uses internally for graphics routines) works best with image sizes that are multiples of 16. So if it all possible, you should try and make the width and height of your resized images a multiple of 16. This will preserve as much of the original image quality as possible.
The ideal solution is to switch to vector graphics that can be resized at will. Instead of pixel information, they contain mathematical information used to draw or "render" the image. Read more on Wikipedia.
let's try metadata in GDI+, may be it can suit your request

C# - Image comparison (fast one)

At the moment I've got an database with over 100.000 images, they ain't the same size or anything like that but I want to make the following for my compagny:
I insert/upload an image and the system returns the image which is most likely the same. I don't know what algorithm to use but it needs to be fast. I can pre-process all the other images and put some info in the database which I use for the comparison.
Now what I want to know what the fastest way is to compare the images (with a good chance of being the same image). And what data I should save into the database (I could probably figure this one out myself if I got the algorithm).
It shouldn't take more then 5 minutes to compare the uploaded image to all the images in the database.
Thanks in advance!
Julian
Look at www.tineye.com, they have some kind of algorithm that I'm looking for. Guessing they use a very complex one, I just need one that does same thing but with lesser rate of succes.
The way I would do it is I'd generate a really small (say.. 1/50 of the original image size) image from every image you're comparing against, and store the thumbnail image path along with the original size in the database. I'd keep the thumbnails as uncompressed bmp's for speed and loss-free-ness (I just made that word up!), since they're so small anyway.
To compare your new image against the other ones, shrink it down by the same amount and compare it against the others pixel by pixel, with a certain threshold (say.. 10% difference from the original).
If it passes this test, you can do a full blown pixel by pixel compare against the original image.
edit: I just want to mention that I went down the probabilistic way before too. It worked OK, but building the meta data for the images took forever, and there were a lot of false positives. Instinctively, I think that calculating local averages for each grid rectangle of your image (which is what shrinking your image down does) would give similar, if not better results.
The best way for comparison is convert image to gray scale format and compare intensity of gray color. Its the fastest way used in real-time systems.
Also if you want to achieve higher qaullity and use colored images - use CIE 1994 or CIE 2000 as color difference formula

Algorithm to detect if a pixel is within a boundary

We're currently creating a simple application for image manipulation in Silverlight, and we've hit a bit of a snag. We want users to be able to select an area of an image (either by drawing a freehand line around their chosen area or by creating a polygon around it), and then be able to apply effects to the pixels within that selection.
Creating a selection of images is easy enough, but we want a really fast algorithm for deciding which pixels should be manipulated (ie. something to detect which pixels are within the user's selection).
We've thought of three possibilities so far, but we're sure that there must be a really efficient and quick way of doing this that's better than these.
1. Pixel by pixel.
We just go through every pixel in an image and check whether it's within the user selection. Obviously this is far too slow!
2. Using a Line Crossing Algorithim.
The type of thing seen here.
3. Flood Fill.
Select the pixels along the path of the selection and then perform a flood fill within that selection. This might work fine.
This must a problem that's commonly solved, so we're guessing there's a ton more solutions that we've not even thought of.
What would you recommend?
Flood fill algorithm is a good choice.
Take a look at this implementation:
Queue-Linear Flood Fill: A Fast Flood Fill Algorithm
You should be able to use your polygon to create a clipping path. The mini-language for describing polygons for Silverlight is quiet well documented.
Alter the pixels on a copy of your image (all pixels is usually easy to modify than some pixels), then use the clipping path to render only the desired area of the changes back to the original image (probably using an extra buffer bitmap for the result).
Hope this helps. Just throwing the ideas out and see if any stick :)

How do I get the coordinates of some text thats part of an image?

I want to cut up the image based on various text markers placed around within it. The font/size of the marker is up to me.
I know commercial OCR packages provide this in their APIs but I'm hoping I can code this up myself.
Ideally I wouldn't have to go pixel to pixel and compare against an image of the marker text.
I'm good with C++/C#, Java, PHP and an other language where a library like this exists...
Ideally I wouldn't have to go pixel to
pixel and compare against an image of
the marker text.
Well, if you're trying to find the marker image, then that's exactly what you'd have to do.
Here's an idea... Set the marker text to a particular color, then process the background image to make sure that it doesn't have any pixels of that color. Finding the markers should become a lot easier at that point.
A barcode would be easier to detect than a text marker. You can always place them together, with the barcode being used for automatic position detection and the text for human user.
If you want to do a really sufisticated solution, you could use the hough transform. It is often used for augumented reality stuff - there it is necessary to find a certain marker in an image. Ofc you would have to change your markers a bit, would this be possible? ;-)
The hough will give you the position of your marker lines and thus the area which you want to cut out.
Here is a link about hough, but there are many others though.
Hough
Or this one
Wiki
A fiduciary marker would be better than text. That's what they use for augmented reality and such.
If the text is always the same size, shape, and oriented in the same direction, you could use normalized cross-correlation.
"Ideally I wouldn't have to go pixel to pixel and compare against an image of the marker text."
Well how else are you going to do it? You're only going to search in part of the image?

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