[HN Gopher] Show HN: Remove unwanted objects in photos simply by...
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Show HN: Remove unwanted objects in photos simply by dragging boxes
Author : gc0119
Score : 270 points
Date : 2022-07-13 09:19 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cleanupphotos.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (cleanupphotos.com)
| hansvm wrote:
| Nice job!
|
| I made one of these back in the day. Also allowing positive
| selections gives the model a lot more information and gives the
| user more power. You can use that to easily remove gridlines and
| smudge marks in photos of drawings without having to select every
| little thing you want deleted, or similarly you can positively
| select the main subject and a bit of scenery, negatively select a
| few passers-by, and let the model remove a crowd. The key point
| is that it moves some of the training-time bias toward a runtime
| selection, allowing better results on a wider variety of tasks
| (at the cost of more clicks on photos the model understands with
| few removals happening).
| remedan wrote:
| This is a bit of a tangent, but when I opened the page, the
| heading looked like this: https://i.imgur.com/mYHKd0Q.png
|
| Turns out the Font family is specified as "Copperplate, Papyrus,
| fantasy" and my system didn't have any font that matched. Fixed
| it by installing the Impact font, as it matches "fantasy".
| speps wrote:
| That's a bold choice of default fonts...
| [deleted]
| gc0119 wrote:
| Fixed, thanks a bunch!
| chucksmash wrote:
| Total tangent but Imgur simply does not load on Firefox for
| Android now? Linked page just spins forever "loading" the
| linked image until I request Desktop Site, at which point it
| happily loads.
|
| An image hosting site that cannot (errrrr, "cannot") display
| images. Imagine.
| netsharc wrote:
| Aren't those the fonts used in one of the MS Frontpage's
| standard homepage templates? (Can anyone from the 90's
| confirm?)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I tried this with the Stalin And Nikolai Yezhov picture, but the
| algorithm gave me a "question mark."
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32086584
| Wistar wrote:
| This produced really impressive results in removing a creased
| dent in a car door and a pile of rocks from in front of a fence.
| Both photos were at an oblique angle and I thought the result was
| good enough for commercial use. I used Chrome on an iPad.
| kk6mrp wrote:
| Why does the text scale with screen size?
| swyx wrote:
| this is an alternative i have come across:
| https://cleanup.pictures/
| njgroene wrote:
| Meant as constructive feedback for OP: the UI is certainly more
| agreeable on the eyes, and I find the brush selection more
| convenient than OPs box selector.
|
| Still: great work, OP!
| moffkalast wrote:
| Ngl both do a pretty great job, OP's may be slightly better
| even.
|
| Unfortunately both output images at thumbnail quality, so
| it's an academic exercise only and not anything actually
| useful.
| Markoff wrote:
| seems to be much faster and more user friendly than OP's site
| and worked also better on one example I tried
| test1-test1 wrote:
| Superb, works nicely for a test run that I did.
| michaelchisari wrote:
| Of course, I had to test it with this photo:
|
| https://imgur.com/a/ypyIhB3
|
| Not too bad! Can definitely tell it's been edited, but for a
| quick removal it was painless.
| nevf1 wrote:
| This gave me a good chuckle, thanks!
| gojomo wrote:
| That image should be the 'Lena' of person-removal image
| benchmarks.
| gus_massa wrote:
| It's so good that I though you were making a joke and posting
| the classic edited photo, but after looking at the wave
| patterns, they look different. Also the bottom of the other
| side of the channel is better in your version.
|
| For context: https://www.history.com/news/josef-stalin-great-
| purge-photo-...
| orobinson wrote:
| I remember when the smart object removal feature was added to
| photoshop and it was pretty cool. The fact that you can now get
| the same functionality working even better in a free browser tool
| is mind blowing.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| FWIW the tip, "hug the box to", comes across a little awkwardly
| to me, I'd prefer "wrap the box around".
|
| Although perhaps the emotional implications of using "hug" are
| worth the unusual nature of the phrase.
| brk wrote:
| I tried with a moderately complex image [0] and it failed to
| properly remove anything.
|
| Edit: saw matsemann's comment - I was using Firefox, where
| selecting areas and clicking remove did nothing. Tried Chrome and
| got the same result of progress bar and then broken image. Same
| result in Safari. All on MacOS.
|
| [0] https://i.imgur.com/mbEnZYD.jpg
| gerwim wrote:
| Must be HN hugged to death. API responses are returning status
| code 500.
| brk wrote:
| OK. Everybody close the tab for a minute, I want to try it.
| ape4 wrote:
| It only works for beaches ;)
| brk wrote:
| I thought that might be the case which is why I tried a beach
| pic. Might have only been QA'd with one specific beach.
| costcofries wrote:
| This is awesome, thank you!
| mbforbes wrote:
| Really nice. I tried removing someone behind a wire grate, and it
| correctly identified them, replaced the wire grate and filled in
| the grate holes with decent background imitation.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I guess this will be a slight improvement on people cropping
| their exes out of pictures on dating sites...
| virtualritz wrote:
| Completely unusable on mobile for me. Is this expected?
| gc0119 wrote:
| Should be back now.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I tried it (several hours ago) on iOS and it worked very well.
| Others are complaining about HN-induced overload, so it might
| be that.
| sscarduzio wrote:
| Broken in my android too
| matsemann wrote:
| Hmm, in Firefox a progress bar shows for a few seconds after
| clicking "remove", and then nothing else happens. In Chrome the
| image disappears and is replaced by a broken image icon.
| neilsimp1 wrote:
| Same. FF - nothing happens. Chromium - broken image icon. If
| this gets fixed I would use the heck outta this app.
| TimMeade wrote:
| Broken here also. Chrome MACOS
| mromanuk wrote:
| It's broken for me, too
| mromanuk wrote:
| Probably the AI is dead because of the HN hug (of death).
| quietthrow wrote:
| This reminds me of pixels magic eraser technology which I think
| is specialized for removing people.
| tux1968 wrote:
| I was prepared to be underwhelmed, but it did a very good job on
| the three photos I threw at it. Very well done indeed.
| phh wrote:
| I'm rather ignorant in that domain, so I wonder if some people
| could enlighten me. What are the AI tasks behind this?
|
| I can identify two steps:
|
| - Identifying an approximate shape of background vs foreground to
| get something more precise than just a rectangle. What is it
| called? Just background detection?
|
| - Actually filling-in the holes. I think this is called a
| diffusion task? Is that correct? ddg-ing around looks like
| diffusion is the name of the method rather than the actual task,
| but I can't find the name of the task.
|
| I'm curious at whether some existing open models would be usable
| on smartphones to make an opensource app (or maybe there are
| already such apps I'm unaware of)
| drewhayward wrote:
| For the two steps you listed it could be image segmentation
| followed by image in-painting.
| jenthoven wrote:
| This is a cool version of a suggestive AI product with a great,
| simple interface for reviewing. Well done -- we admire this type
| of product at Kapwing, the company I lead.
| echelon wrote:
| Just an FYI, CloudFlare is blocking this.
| IYasha wrote:
| Checking your browser before accessing cleanupphotos.com.
|
| This process is automatic. Your browser will redirect to your
| requested content shortly.
|
| Please allow up to 5 seconds...
|
| Redirecting...
|
| FOREVER.
|
| Thanks for using this garbage service.
| gc0119 wrote:
| We are working on stabilizing the app, sorry for the trouble.
| KronisLV wrote:
| Seems like the endpoints of the service itself now seem to return
| HTTP 500 for some reason, so once you click on "Remove", nothing
| happens.
|
| Example URL:
| https://cleanupphotos.com/cleanup/false/NUMBER_GOES_HERE
|
| Response contents: Internal Server Error
| The server encountered an internal error and was unable to
| complete your request. Either the server is overloaded or there
| is an error in the application.
| xtracto wrote:
| Aaah, so that's why It was behaving wonky for me.
| Markoff wrote:
| it works reasonably well on clothes blocked by objects, I suppose
| not so great for skin blocked by clothes
| thyrox wrote:
| Couldn't find the pricing page. Is this free? What's your
| business model?
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Cool tool but just as a suggestion, having that example of
| removing 'Copyright' watermarks is probably a bad idea in terms
| of legal CYA and just general decency in terms of respecting
| attribution.
|
| If that is what people want to do with the tool is beyond your
| control but to showcase it in your example gets you on the hook
| for ill-intent.
| [deleted]
| bitL wrote:
| That sequence can be easily replaced by some other neutral text
| like "Lake Tahoe" instead of "Copyright" and still most users
| would get it.
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| Why does that sound familiar? Was that in a postcard picture
| from back to the future or something?
| nrdgrrrl wrote:
| That's welcome to Hill Valley you're likely thinking of. ht
| tps://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/106917/1368185/Hill%.
| ..
| rob74 wrote:
| Yup, that was my first thought too: people will probably have
| the idea of using the tool to remove watermarks on their own
| anyway, but by giving it as an example you are putting yourself
| in the line of fire.
| ekianjo wrote:
| removing watermarks does not remove the copyright...
| Closi wrote:
| No, but it can aide infringement (just as torrenting a movie
| does not remove copyright, but trackers can problematic to
| run).
| johndough wrote:
| Why would this cause legal issues? (assuming the author owns
| the rights to the images shown in the preview)
|
| I can think of two related topics:
|
| * Export restriction on encryption (does not apply here)
|
| * YouTube's content policy on hacking tutorials (not applicable
| here either, since this is not YouTube)
| lovelearning wrote:
| Some time ago, youtube-dl, a downloader tool for YT, faced
| legal troubles from RIAA simply for showing a copyrighted
| video URL in a demo. Something about anti-circumvention. [1]
|
| Given that this project is an alternative to Adobe's
| features, the latter may feel tempted to claim this is a tool
| _intended_ for copyright circumvention.
|
| [1]: https://commonsware.com/blog/2020/10/24/youtube-dl-
| avoiding-...
| mminer237 wrote:
| There are different forms of secondary liability for
| copyright infringement: https://matthewminer.name/law/outline
| s/3L/1st+Semester/LAW+6...
|
| Particularly, inducement liability could be a real issue
| here.
|
| In _MGM v. Grokster_ , the Supreme Court unanimously said,
| "[O]ne who distributes a device with the object of promoting
| its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression
| or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is
| liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third
| parties."
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I've often wondered if I could get Apple computers sued by
| ripping CDs with iTunes and sharing the results (ripping is
| copy infringement in the UK, the media companies had the
| government remove format-shifting rights and we don't have
| Fair Use [our Fair Dealing is very conservative]).
| jraph wrote:
| No, because you can rip CDs containing stuff under some
| creative commons license or some other license that
| permits copying.
|
| You probably can't sue a knife maker because you killed
| someone with one of their knives. My knives usually cut
| vegetables and tofu, which is allowed as far as I know.
| vermilingua wrote:
| Because it doesn't need to be illegal to cause legal issues.
| All it takes is one wealthy enough, persistent enough,
| annoyed enough plaintiff, to make your year extremely shitty.
| ComputerCat wrote:
| LOL there are plenty of people like that
| xwdv wrote:
| I say the opposite. At first I didn't care much for the removal
| of people, but taking watermarks out of images had me sold.
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(page generated 2022-07-13 23:00 UTC)