Image Processing Algorithms
Image processing algorithms have long been one of my favorite areas of study. It’s the genesis for a number of my Central examples (i.e. EXIF data and hex editor), so you can only imagine that I’m super-excited about Apollo. Of course manipulating bitmap data has been possible in ActionScript since Flash Player 8, and has only gotten better (due to performance) in Flash Player 9. Taking this to the extreme (perhaps) is Fauxto.
Now while I generally try to keep opinion out of my blog posts, and stick to technical details, I have a few words about Fauxto.
I want to say right up front that I think the concept is great - an image editor done using Flex. What worries me about Fauxto is the ultimate goal. I haven’t heard many details about where they are heading, but I have heard a lot of people talking about how Fauxto has “layers like Photoshop”. If the goal is to be Photoshop, then I’m really worried about how well Fauxto will be received in the long term.
Let me be clear here that I’m talking mostly about the business model. Photoshop caters to the high-end design professional. Paint Shop Pro general targets those with more finite needs and on a more limited budget. Gimp finds it’s origins in *nix world. What of Fireworks though? It has layers, but caters to the web professional specifically with image optimization, page composition, navigation wizards and other features. Then there are countless other image editors that focus really well on a specific use-case such as icon creation, image maps, etc.
My statement to the folks behind Fauxto would be simply to be very clear about what your goal is, and to not get distracted by the other countless possibilities.
Does the world really need another Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Gimp or Fireworks? I’ve heard hints about a model similar to YouTube, which sounds good so far. YouTube brought video for the web to the masses. If Fauxto can bring image editing to the masses as a service (SaaS), I think they may be onto something. But then do the masses need layers like Photoshop? Maybe, maybe not, but be careful Fauxto; focus…
In the spirit of Fauxto however, here are a couple image processing algorithms I’ve implemented recently for one of my projects - grayscale and unsharp mask. I didn’t see them in Fauxto’s filters so maybe those folks will look to add them. Perhaps another developer out there will enjoy learning from the source code. To give credit where credit is due, the inspiration for how to implement the unsharp mask comes from Jerry Huxtable’s Java image filters (but with a distinctly Flash twist).