Patent ID: 8180178

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for manipulating acquired digital images in a computer system, comprising: creating a crop cost array for each of a set of input images with a set of associated aspect ratios, wherein the cost crop array operates and is stored on the computer system and wherein each element of the array holds a lowest crop cost of an input image for a predetermined aspect ratio; generating plural possible candidate combinations of aspect ratios for the images, wherein one aspect ratio is generated for each image; creating an arrangement of the images for each candidate combination in which each image is cropped to its associated aspect ratio in the candidate combination; evaluating each possible arrangement using a combination of a crop cost of each of the images at their selected aspect ratio and a measure of an aesthetic quality of the layout arrangement; selecting a layout combination with a lowest combined crop cost and layout evaluation score; cropping each image according to a respective aspect ratio in the selected layout combination; and arranging the cropped digital images in the selected layout to produce an automatically formatted output layout page.