Russell Kirsch e os 50 anos de 'imagens quadradas' quando tudo virou bits e pixels
Essa é a primeira imagem que se tem notícia no formato "digital". Foi nessa foto em que Russell Kirsch mandou seu filho aos bits através de um scanner, ela marca quando a sutileza do analógico deu espaço ao quadrado/aproximação dos pixels.
Hoje aos 81 anos, Russell Kirsch está disposto a consertar seu "erro" através de um algoritmo mais robusto para apresentação das imagens. Abaixo a foto do mesmo filho dele (hoje com 53), num comparativo entre o velho e o novo método:
About:
Russell Kirsch says he's sorry.
More than 50 years ago, Kirsch took a picture of his infant son and scanned it into a computer. It was the first digital image: a grainy, black-and-white baby picture that literally changed the way we view the world. With it, the smoothness of images captured on film was shattered to bits.
The square pixel became the norm, thanks in part to Kirsch, and the world got a little bit rougher around the edges.
Kirsch's method assesses a square-pixel picture with masks that are 6 by 6 pixels each and looks for the best way to divide this larger pixel cleanly into two areas of the greatest contrast. The program tries two different masks over each area -- in one, a seam divides the mask into two rough triangles, and in the other a seam creates two rough rectangles. Each mask is then rotated until the program finds the configuration that splits the 6-by-6 area into sections that contrast the most. Then, similar pixels on either side of the seam are fused.
