Digital Photos Can Animate a Face So İt Ages and Moves Before Your Eyes

Personal photos occupy an ever-expanding amount of hard drive space. Baby, family and vacation photos can now number in the thousands. While some poke fun at the digital glut, others see a unique opportunity. Researchers at the University of Washington have created a way to take hundreds or thousands of digital portraits and in seconds create an animation of the person's face.

The tool can make a face appear to age over time, or choose images from the same period to make the person's expression gradually change from a smile to a frown.

The researchers were inspired, in part, by people who snap a photo of themselves each day and then align them to create a movie where they appear to age onscreen. They sought an automated way to get the same effect.

"I have 10,000 photos of my 5-year-old son, taken over every possible expression," said co-author Steve Seitz, a UW professor of computer science and engineering and engineer in Google's Seattle office. "I would like to visualize how he changes over time, be able to see all the expressions he makes, be able to see him in 3-D or animate him from the photos."

Lead author Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman, a UW postdoctoral researcher in computer science and engineering, will present the research next week in Vancouver, B.C., at the meeting of SIGGRAPH, the Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques.