Genetic paint: A search for salient paintings

Abstract

The contribution of this paper is a novel non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) algorithm for rendering real images in an impasto painterly style. We argue that figurative artworks are salience maps, and develop a novel painting algorithm that uses a genetic algorithm (GA) to search the space of possible paintings for a given image, so approaching an "optimal" artwork in which salient detail is conserved and non-salient detail is attenuated. We demonstrate the results of our technique on a wide range of images, illustrating both the improved control over level of detail due to our salience adaptive painting approach, and the benefits gained by subsequent relaxation of the painting using the GA. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.