Researchers Developing a Method to Make Wide-Angle Selfies Look Like They Were Shot With a Real Portrait Lens

Researchers have been doing some very cool stuff with imaging algorithms lately, including trying to automatically colorize black-and-white photos and even remove reflections from images after the fact. The latest bit of mad science comes from Princeton University researchers and tries to make portraits shot with a wide-angle lens (like the ones on smartphones) look like they were shot with a more portrait-oriented, short telephoto lens.

The technology maps a model of the face and then uses what’s basically a map of the lens characteristics to make adjustments that result in a photo that looks like it was shot from a different distance, using lens with a different focal length. The results aren’t perfect yet, of course, and there’s no real public demo that I could find beyond the pre-made examples, but I could see how this kind of automatic feature might be very appealing to some people, especially those who take a lot of smartphone selfies.

From: Reddit