Improved seam merging for content-aware image resizing

In this paper, we propose an improved seam merging method for content-aware image resizing. This method merges a two-pixelwidth seam element into one new pixel in image reduction and inserts a new pixel between the two pixels in image enlargement. To preserve important contents and structure, our method uses energy terms associated with importance and structure. Our method preserve the main structures by using a cartoon version of the original image when calculating the structure energy. In addition, we introduce a new energy term to suppress the distortion generated by excessive reduction or enlargement in iterated merger or insertion. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can produce satisfactory results in both image reduction and enlargement.