Image stylization for yunnan out-of-print woodcut through virtual carving and printing

Abstract

Woodcut printing is a special art combining carving and printing skills. The difference of Yunnan Out-of-Print woodcut printing from ordinary printing is that carving alternates with printing in cycles to produce multi-color printings, and all colors are printed just out of one block which is recarved for each color. This is a complex process and requires high technical skills. We propose an image stylization method for Yunnan out-of-print woodcut through virtual carving and printing. First, image segmentation is applied to isolate areas for carving. In each segmented region, scores collected from real woodcut are placed to simulate the carving process. We introduce an algorithm to automate the placement according to the image feature. In the printing process, we mainly focus on the simulation of the mixture of oil paint and the special effect of random color blending in Yunnan out-of-print woodcut.