Texture-aware ASCII art synthesis with proportional fonts

Xuemiao Xu, Linyuan Zhong, Minshan Xie, Jing Qin, Yilan Chen, Qiang Jin, Tien Tsin Wong, Guoqiang Han

Research output: Chapter in book / Conference proceedingConference article published in proceeding or bookAcademic researchpeer-review

6 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We present a fast structure-based ASCII art generation method that accepts arbitrary images (real photograph or hand-drawing) as input. Our method supports not only fixed width fonts, but also the visually more pleasant and computationally more challenging proportional fonts, which allows us to represent challenging images with a variety of structures by characters. We take human perception into account and develop a novel feature extraction scheme based on a multi-orientation phase congruency model. Different from most existing contour detection methods, our scheme does not attempt to remove textures as much as possible. Instead, it aims at faithfully capturing visually sensitive features, including both main contours and textural structures, while suppressing visually insensitive features, such as minor texture elements and noise. Together with a deformation-tolerant image similarity metric, we can generate lively and meaningful ASCII art, even when the choices of character shapes and placement are very limited. A dynamic programming based optimization is proposed to simultaneously determine the optimal proportional-font characters for matching and their optimal placement. Experimental results show that our results outperform state-of-the-art methods in term of visual quality.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationExpressive 2015
Subtitle of host publicationJoint Symposium of Computational Aesthetics, CAe, Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering, NPAR, Sketch-Based Interfaces and Modeling, SBIM
EditorsDieter W. Fellner
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages183-193
Number of pages11
ISBN (Electronic)9783905674910
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 20 Jun 2015
Externally publishedYes
EventWorkshop on Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering, NPAR 2015 - Istanbul, Turkey
Duration: 20 Jun 201522 Jun 2015

Publication series

NameExpressive 2015: Joint Symposium of Computational Aesthetics, CAe, Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering, NPAR, Sketch-Based Interfaces and Modeling, SBIM

Conference

ConferenceWorkshop on Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering, NPAR 2015
Country/TerritoryTurkey
CityIstanbul
Period20/06/1522/06/15

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Science Applications
  • Modelling and Simulation
  • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design
  • Applied Mathematics

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