The Composite Greek Woman
The Composite Greek Woman
4 March 2006
AIM AND METHOD
Morphing is an image processing technique that can be used to create composite pictures summarizing a large number of individual objects. I have applied morphing to a set of facial pictures of Greek women to create an overall average.The following Greek women were used:Evelina Papantoniou, Niki Kartsona, Katerina Stamataki, Evaggelia Aravani, Chrysanthi Dafla, Elena Katritsi, Alexandra Kapeletzi, Elisavet Filippouli, Elisavet Moutafi, Angie Berovinou, Dimitra Aiginiti, Evi Adam, Korina Stergiadou, Konstantina Nikolaou, Nancy Alexiadi, Katerina Diamantopoulou.
This group includes models, actresses, singers, politicians, and tv presenters. Pictures of women facing forward were selected from Pictures of Greek Women with the criteria of (i) facing forward, (ii) largely unobstructed facial view, (iii) neutral expression, either non-smiling or smiling minimally. Two additional women (Alexiadi and Diamantopoulou) were included to bring the number of seed images to 16.
Hierarchical pairwise morphing was applied to a set of 16 seed women using Sqirlz Morph 1.2e. Pairs of images were morphed by setting up a series of 30-40 control points in each of the original images, and the procedure was repeated hierarchically until a single final composite was created.
No pre-processing was carried out in the original images except resizing, cropping, and sharpening (in Irfanview 3.97). The One Step Photo Fix filter in Jasc Paint Shop Pro v. 9 was applied to the composites (after the entire hierarchical morphing process) to give them a more natural appearance by enhancing contrast and color hues. Images were also subsequently resized, followed by sharpening (in Irfanview).
RESULTS
The 16 original pictures, the 8 first-generation, 4 second-generation, 2 third-generation, and final composite image are shown below.
Composites of Greek and European Female Athletes
12 March 2006
METHODS
In the Composite Greek Woman, an average of 16 Greek actresses, singers, politicians, and tv presenters were averaged to create an overall composite. In a new experiment, 15 female Greek volleyball players were morphed into a single composite using Sqirlz Morph 1.2e. All women with Greek names from Panathinaikos and Panellinios volleyball clubs were used. Pairwise averaging was not used in this case, but Sqirlz Morph constructed a single average from all 15 input images.Morphing was also applied to sets of 16 women from 12 different European groups, comprising of Torino 2006 Winter Olympic athletes. The 16 first (alphabetically) females from each group were selected. Examples whose face was rotated excessively away from frontal view -defined as rotation that obscured one of the nasal wings- were dismissed. Individuals whose hair obscured a substantial part of their face were also dismissed. Finally, individuals of obvious foreign origin, were also dismissed. None of the Balkan countries could provide 16 individuals on their own, so Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, FYRO Macedonia, and Bulgaria were pooled to form a "Balkan Slav" group. For the same reason, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia were pooled to form a "Baltic" group.All the final composite images were cropped to contain mainly the head, and resized to a height of 200 pixels. Subsequently the Sharpen Moreand One Step Photo Fix filter in Jasc Pain Shop Pro v. 9 was applied. It should be noted that differences in pigmentation should not be inferred from these composites, since original picture collections differed greatly in lighting and contrast conditions. At most, the pictures should be interpreted as shape averages of a large collection of accomplished female athletes from the different groups.
RESULTS
The 15 original Greek volleyball players are pictured below.
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