HP Camera With Slimming Feature?

I don't like the idea of a camera that can change reality. First, they take off fat. Next, who knows?!

Internet Dating will never be the same!!!!! LOL

Who said you need professional airbrushing to look like a celebrity on a magazine cover :-)

It's really amazing what you can do with a 2D transform. I'd have to write some test code to be sure, but I have a pretty good idea how they're doing this. They're using some continuous function mapping a horizontal coordinate and a degree of slimming to another horizontal coordinate. They probably need to use bilinear filtering or some other interpolation technique, as pixels are defined on a discrete coordinate plane.

If you took one of these cameras and took a picture of a blank wall with a line going from one corner of the picture to the opposite corner, you would see the line being distorted as you changed the degree of slimming.

As a computer scientist who specializes in graphics, this is a neat mathematical trick. As a human being, this makes me very sad indeed.

haha..internet dating... too funny!!!

How truly sad that the model's "slim" picture is considered an improvement over what she really looks like. It's unfortunate that we cannot accept ourselves for what we are -- I expect this will be a big hit.

...as if the model 'needed slimming' in the first place. I suppose too, that this will be a really big hit. Some people prefer fooling themselves (and others - the dating comment was too funny :>D ) rather than accepting themselves...or if not happy, motivating themselves to create improvement.

I never liked the 'waif' look so standard now on TV and screen.

awesome! Now we all can look like emanicpated models with just the click of a button....since having muscle and some curves is just so yesterday.

Having been morbidly obese myself, I know how much denial there is in being overweight - denial about what you look like and denial about you're doing to your health. This new camera will allow fatties to bury their heads even further in the sand. I'm sure it will sell very well. It's so sad...

This is hilarious!!! Yet at the same time so incredibly sad. I thought the whole idea of losing weight was so you could look back on those old "fat photos" and see how far you've come. I also wonder how this works if you have two people in the photo, say with their arms around each other, one is fat , the other thin, would you be able to single out one person for "imrovements", or would the thin person have to be modified too and end up looking like a skeleton?

Is this technology really new? I always suspected they used something like this on some of those before & after photos for weight loss systems.

I like the idea of being able to "slim" a photo! Yes, the societal message is sad, but it would allow me to enjoy my photos so much more (less cringe-factor).

Only in America...

Like a bunch of women, claiming a slightly overweight woman "doesn't need slimming" because of what it says about them....

"Like a bunch of women, claiming a slightly overweight woman "doesn't need slimming" because of what it says about them...."

Um, yeah, ok, slightly overweight? How weird, she actually looks quite small to me, maybe you need glasses.

Lol, what happens if the camera gets turned 90 degrees?

Does it become a 'fattening feature'?

Great - I have found the perfect diet!! - I can be fat and still look slim - my cyber dating life will change forever - I just can't meet anyone face to face otherwise I'll be seen as lying to them and myself. Great for :) - Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies....

this is just too funny. i first heard about it on aol and then decided to google it and see what would come up. i don't think it's going to be much asstiance in people's determination to lose weight. ='(

Caramelle-oh said:
I also wonder how this works if you have two people in the photo, say with their arms around each other, one is fat , the other thin, would you be able to single out one person for "improvements", or would the thin person have to be modified too and end up looking like a skeleton?

Both people would become thinner. In the photo industry trade magazine article that I read about this function, it went on to say, "So if you've photographed Rosie O'Donnell standing next to Kate Moss, you're on your own."

What I wonder is how it would make the entire image narrower. Obviously, you wouldn't want to crop these images for printing until AFTER doing the slimming function.

Also, I'm not sure if this function would hide fat as much as everyone is assuming here. It seems to be lengthen the face as much as it narrows the body -- not flattering for double chins. Most thin people I know actually tend to have wider-looking faces, as the skin is closer to the cheekbone and there isn't a lot of fat (which hangs down). Also, the shoulders of a normal person should not be more than twice as wide as the face. If there's enough fat to make that thrice wide, the proportion will give a fat person away.

If this function were sophisticated enough to avoid the face (maybe using something like Nikon's face-finding AF), then we'd have something.

As for this lessening the effects on fat people... like they don't get enough discrimation in person? Hey, maybe seeing what you'd look like twenty pounds lighter is just the motivation you need to make it happen!