Summary
In Edge-Respecting Brushes, Dan R. Olsen Jr. and Mitchell K. Harris outline a new form of paint brush for painting programs (such as Adobe Photoshop) that is edge-detecting; that is, it identifies and paints around or along edges of an existing image. This edge-respecting algorithm combines both intelligent selection and applying affects to an image to allow the user to paint around, or over objects. For example, in the picture below, the user can use the edge-respecting brush to paint only the skin of a person in an image, or paint the background of a portrait another color without having to go through the tedious process of selecting only the section that they want to paint.
This brush works more effectively than the traditional fill paint can, which will fill down the the pixel of boundaries, allowing for leakage into other parts of the picture. This brush will allow for breaks in lines, and fill in only the part the user wants to paint. This allows for users to quickly fill in areas in a cartoon image for example, or change the color of an object in a picture quickly and easily. The brushes also extend to other non-painting tools, such as the brushes that apply blur to the picture or lighten or darken an area. When the user clicks the mouse, the algorithm fills outward using Dijkstra's algorithm (like normal flood fill), but terminates the recursive calls whenever a pixel that is a neighbor exceeds some given threshold. In normal flood fill, the algorithm terminates at the first pixel that is different from the mouse click pixel, even just by an unnoticeable amount of color difference. When users tried out this new brush algorithm, they felt it was must easier to use, quicker, less tedious, and more intuitive than the traditional selection - fill algorithms.
Discussion
This better come to Photoshop soon. This is possibly the most important innovation for computer painting systems because sometimes when editing pictures that are lower quality, fill areas may have smaller variations in color (like not all white, but some light grays as well). Usually I have had to paint the area manually zoomed in really close because the flood fill tools left out most of the fill area (because of the small color variations). This brush would make everything so much easier, and make photo editing much faster. Users that do not know all of the tools of Photoshop or other photo editing programs would find this more accessible and easier to use, especially for the newest novices.
I would love it if Corel Painter had something like this. When I've been coloring in my drawings a lot of time goes into making sure the color goes up to the outline and maintaining the thickness of the outline.
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