Xerox helps to cut through document clutter November 17, 2011 10:00 by Andy Warburton
Printer ink maker Xerox says it is making it easier for people to sort through the clutter of documents and photos on their computers.
Ideal for graphic designers who need to be able to print the right pictures when they need them, new technologies have been developed by a team at the firm that they claim make it simpler to find images quickly.
Developed at the Xerox Research Centre Europe, the four new tools analyse, classify and retrieve images and collections in new ways.
"The hands-on demos on Open Xerox illustrate how our imaging technology can be used to solve real business problems," said Craig Saunders, manager of Xerox's European computer vision research group.
"We put these tools out there for anyone to tinker with - from someone working in marketing or an individual with a large collection of photographs."
The four technologies that ought make it easier for people at home to use their colour printer ink cartridges to create hard copies of photos are: Similar Image Search, Image Categorizer, Aesthetic Image Search and Catepix.
Similar Image Search is capable of searching five million images in less than a second on a standard desktop computer. Xerox says it is working on a cloud-based version that will be able to provide real-time search of hundreds of millions of images.
A recent winner of the InternationalImagenet benchmarking challenge in image classification, Image Categorizer automatically classifies images according to their content. It is aimed at advertisers, marketers or photographers who manage large collections of images.
Aesthetic Image Search works by pinpointing the parts of the image that make it unique. "For example, good beach photos are often characterised by silky waves obtained by a long camera exposure. The algorithm will detect such photos," Xerox explains.
Finally, Catepix uses "sophisticated image analysis technology" that will analyse Facebook photos and tell the user what their photos say about their personality.
Posted by Huw Carrington
