I am hoping that either: a) resizing will be a lot faster once this feature is complete, or b) there will be some kind of lo-fi interactive mode. Otherwise I could see it being rather challenging and frustrating to be continually guessing at the target width for an image to find the "ideal" width/height if you are resizing for look, and not to fit a specific width/height. Also: I noticed there was an option box for "Remove Pixels" or "Add pixels". Shouldn't this just be automatically determined by the target size? It makes no sense that I would want to remove pixels if I specify dimensions that are larger than the original...

You can input the width and height manually (as text) if you want. Regarding removing pixels or adding pixels, no, because you could also scale in either direction. So this has to be manually added.

Sorry to be a hassle, but the invite didn't get through, my e-mail on the last comment may7 have been mis typed, could you try again please?

Simply looking at the width/height will not automatically give the algorithm a clear choice if it is better to get there by adding or removing pixels. For example when you take the cop picture it makes absolute sense to use "remove pixels" when you want to create an image with portrait proportions. "Remove pixels" in that case means in practice that first we scale up the image by bicubic scaling proportionally so the height equals your desired target height, then we will reduce the width by seam carving vertival seams until the desired target width is reached. So when you look at the cops the information that will be removed is the desert and the sky pixels but the bodys will stay untouched. Would you use "add pixels" instead the result would be that most new seams only get added at the white sky on top plus several that will go through the body of the bigger cop at least. This will cause his figure to become stretched and probably look unnatural. In general I do prefer the "remove" over the "add", but it is really something that depends on the image's content.

Is this the first thing of this kind? I've always wondered how to do something like this but never had success. This is just another feature polishing off aviary.

I think Aviary are the first to commercially implement this resizing technique, am I right? This is really awesome. This feature will be a great time saver in many cases. But, I don't like the way it is being used here. I think I should be able to just lock the areas that I don't want to be affected. And then just start resizing and see the effect as I go. Plus, in this example, was it necessary to mark the two guys? shouldn't it figure that up itself? Was the video fastwarded when applying? Just trying to figure out how long would it take. Thank you for sharing!

No it's definitely not the first, but from what we've played with it's the best online implementation of the algorhythm to date. It's definitely not necessary to mark the two guys, but we think it's an important feature and wanted to highlight it in the video. You can mark for protection and for deletion. The video was fast forwarded when applying (2.5x).

Sounds great Avi! I actually have never heard of seam carving, but have always thought about the concept. What is the estimated release date for this? Do you plan to release it standalone first? (As in just Woodpecker, or mixed with Phoenix first?) I'm really excited, as I think that this would help speed up my image editing a lot! Keep up the good work!

cool. I wish my beta invite would get sent soon, there's so many cool things I'd like to try out with the tools in phoenix and in all the other apps. About how long does it take to get an invite after you apply?

Blaze, mine was a couple weeks, once I started being active on the site is when I got my invite, still waiting on one for peacock though :). But yeah Blaze, just keep up to date and make your presence known, not to sound arrogant, but they seem to like people who are involved, which makes since. Am I right Avi?

Ah, ok then I'll start commenting more then. That's a lot easier than just checking your email 5 times a day. :)

I haven't heard of seam carving, but it certainly does look like an excellent time saver. Would we be able to select more than two elements for the effect to skip over? Say, if there was a third guy between both guys halfway between them, and you wanted to reduce the gap between all three of them without completely eliminating the middle guy. I'm looking forward to seeing more of this application.

@jon.definitely right. :) What's your Aviary username? - I'll add peacock to your account. @blaze - invite on it's way. @whisperingmachines, it definitely could be used that way. You could also tell it to remove a specific person and ignore the other two.

http://rsizr.com/ has been doing this for a while if I remember correctly. I like the steps I'm seeing in Aviary though. Great work.

My Aviary username is jonners710. Thanks for adding peacock when you do :).

Ok, that was pretty neat. I remember seeing a demo video of this kind of technique a few months ago but it seems as though its finding its way into products now (and not just Photoshop plugins). Very interesting.

This looks like the best and most intuitive tool for seam carving that I've yet seen anywhere. I can't wait till I get a shot at this. I have mostly been lurking here and just barely have I scratches phoenix but this kind of addon is what looks to set this whole suit apart from photoshop for me. If someone feels like letting me in on woody here I'd be the happiest real boy in all the world.

This is a very sweet tool. I had seen seam carving before, but love the way this interface looks. I've signed up for the beta, can't wait to try this out! There are tons of great uses for this.

When is it coming I want to try!!!

I noticed using rsizr that the process is extremely slow even though I have a moderately fast computer. I am interested to hear if the algorithm can be sped up, because I was shocked at how slow rsizr is. Is Aviary planning on perfecting the algorithm to speed up the process or do you still expect this to be an "important use only tool" because it requires so much processing time? -Hairchrm

that already exists as commercial product XFile plug-in to Photoshop at humansoftware.com

great page

The image tool is too good to use. Image resizer is a best tool I've ever used. Thanks for that.

I'm in Phoenix, and I can't find the tool to do this? Which tool is it, can someone write up a tutorial? Thanks, -Roman

@Hairchrm Same, although my computer is reasonable fast, rsizr took an extremely long time to successfully resize (retarget) the photo that I had uploaded. I absolutely love the results that Rsizr produces, I just hope that Woodpecker is quicker

I would love to try this out, is it available yet?

Thank you for the good information and the positive atitude.