Patent ID: 8270771

Claim:
A method for content aware resizing of a digital image in an image processing system, the method comprising: receiving an image having a plurality of pixels; defining a weighting function based on a resizing to be performed on said image, said weighting function generating a distribution as a function of distance; determining an importance value for each pixel in said image to generate an importance map for said image; and repeating until a target size of said image has been achieved: carving a plurality of pixel paths through said image, each path comprising a seam traversing said image; calculating an energy for each seam, said seam energy being based on importance values of pixels along a same path through said importance map; calculating a distance between each seam and a previously selected seam; calculating a weighting for each seam using said weighting function and said calculated seam distance and applying each weighting to said seam energy to produce a revised energy for each seam; selecting a seam based on said revised energy; revising said importance map; and resizing said image at a location of said selected seam.