Patent ID: 8406482
Filing Date: 2013-03-26
Classification: G06K

Abstract:
1. A computer-implemented method, comprising: accessing data representing an image comprising a plurality of pixels; creating an initial skin tone mask for the image dependent on a general skin tone model, wherein the general skin tone model is based on a plurality of training samples, and wherein the initial skin tone mask comprises a respective value for each of the plurality of pixels indicating a probability that the pixel is a skin pixel; applying an upper threshold to the initial skin tone mask to identify one or more of the plurality of pixels of the image most likely to be skin pixels; applying a lower threshold to the initial skin tone mask to identify one or more pixels of the image least likely to be skin pixels; producing an image-specific skin tone model dependent on the one or more pixels most likely to be skin pixels, and producing an image-specific non-skin model dependent on the one or more pixels least likely to be skin pixels; and applying the image-specific skin tone model and the image-specific non-skin model to the image to generate a final skin tone mask for the image, wherein the final skin tone mask comprises a respective value indicating a degree of membership in the final skin tone mask for each of the plurality of pixels in the image, and wherein the degree of membership in the final skin tone mask is a function of a similarity in color to the one or more pixels most likely to be skin pixels and the one or more pixels least likely to be skin pixels.