research-article

Digital micrography

Authors:

Mikhail Bessmeltsev,

Nathan CarrAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), Volume 30, Issue 4

Article No.: 100, Pages 1 - 12

https://doi.org/10.1145/2010324.1964995

Published: 25 July 2011 Publication History

Abstract

We present an algorithm for creating digital micrography images, or micrograms, a special type of calligrams created from minuscule text. These attractive text-art works successfully combine beautiful images with readable meaningful text. Traditional micrograms are created by highly skilled artists and involve a huge amount of tedious manual work. We aim to simplify this process by providing a computerized digital micrography design tool. The main challenge in creating digital micrograms is designing textual layouts that simultaneously convey the input image, are readable and appealing. To generate such layout we use the streamlines of singularity free, low curvature, smooth vector fields, especially designed for our needs. The vector fields are computed using a new approach which controls field properties via a priori boundary condition design that balances the different requirements we aim to satisfy. The optimal boundary conditions are computed using a graph-cut approach balancing local and global design considerations. The generated layouts are further processed to obtain the final micrograms. Our method automatically generates engaging, readable micrograms starting from a vector image and an input text while providing a variety of optional high-level controls to the user.

Supplementary Material

MP4 File (tp098_11.mp4)

Download
30.42 MB

References

[1]

Adobe, 2010. Illustrator CS5 adobe.com/products/illustrator.

[2]

Amenta, N., and Bern, M. 1999. Surface reconstruction by voronoi filtering. Discrete and Computational Geometry 22.

[3]

Apollinaire, G., and Greet, A. H. 1980. Calligrammes: poems of peace and war (1913-1916): A Bilingual Edition. University of California Press, Berkeley.

[4]

Asente, P. 2010. Folding avoidance in skeletal strokes. In Sketch Based Interfaces and Modeling, Eurographics, ACM.

[5]

Avrin, L. 1981. Hebrew Micrography - One Thousand Years of Art in Script. Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

[6]

Bommes, D., Zimmer, H., and Kobbelt, L. 2009. Mixed-integer quadrangulation. ACM Trans. Graph. 28 (July).

Digital Library

[7]

Chen, G., Esch, G., Wonka, P., Muller, P., and Zhang, E. 2008. Interactive procedural street modeling. ACM Trans. Graph. 27, 3.

Digital Library

[8]

Crane, K., Desbrun, M., and Schröder, P. 2010. Trivial connections on discrete surfaces. Computer Graphics Forum (SGP) 29, 5, 1525--1533.

[9]

Edmonds, J. 1967. Optimum branchings. Journal of Research of the National Bureau of Standurds 71B, 233--240.

[10]

Fisher, M., Schröder, P., Desbrun, M., and Hoppe, H. 2007. Design of tangent vector fields. ACM Trans. Graph. 26 (July).

Digital Library

[11]

Froumentin, M., 2010. Textorizer lapin-bleu.net/software/textorizer.

[12]

Gill, P. E., Murray, W., and Wright, M. H. 1981. Practical Optimization. Academic Press.

[13]

Helmond, A., 2010. Textaizer mosaizer.com/Textaizer.

[14]

Jobard, B., and Lefer, W. 1997. Creating evenly-spaced streamlines of arbitrary density. In Eurographics Workshop, Eurographics, 43--56.

[15]

Jodoin, P.-M., Epstein, E., Granger-Piché, M., and Ostromoukhov, V. 2002. Hatching by example: a statistical approach. In Proceedings of the 2nd international symposium on Non-photorealistic animation and rendering, ACM, New York, NY, USA, NPAR '02, ACM, 29--36.

[16]

Karp, R. 1972. Reducibility among combinatorial problems. In Complexity of Computer Computations, R. Miller and J. Thatcher, Eds. Plenum Press, 85--103.

[17]

Knuth, D. E. 1997. Digital Typography. Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, USA.

[18]

Li, Y., Bao, F., Zhang, E., Kobayashi, Y., and Wonka, P. 2010. Geometry synthesis on surfaces using field-guided shape grammars. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 99, RapidPosts.

[19]

Ostromoukhov, V., and Hersch, R. D. 1999. Multi-color and artistic dithering. In Proceedings of the 26th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, ACM Press/Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., New York, NY, USA, SIGGRAPH '99, ACM, 425--432.

[20]

Palacios, J., and Zhang, E. 2007. Rotational symmetry field design on surfaces. ACM Trans. Graph. (Proc. Siggraph 2007) 26 (July).

[21]

Pedersen, H., and Singh, K. 2006. Organic labyrinths and mazes. In Proceedings of NPAR'06, ACM, 79--86.

[22]

Praun, E., Hoppe, H., Webb, M., and Finkelstein, A. 2001. Real-time hatching. In Proceedings of the 28th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, ACM, New York, NY, USA, SIGGRAPH '01, ACM.

[23]

Ray, N., Vallet, B., Li, W. C., and Lévy, B. 2008. N-symmetry direction field design. ACM Trans. Graph. 27 (May), 10:1--10:13.

Digital Library

[24]

Ray, N., Vallet, B., Alonso, L., and Lévy, B. 2009. Geometry aware direction field processing. ACM Transactions on Graphics.

[25]

Shapira, L., Shamir, A., and Cohen-Or, D. 2008. Consistent mesh partitioning and skeletonization using the shape diameter function. The Visual Computer 24, 4 (April), 249--259.

Digital Library

[26]

Sharma, G. 2002. Digital Color Imaging Handbook. CRC Press, Inc., Boca Raton, FL, USA.

[27]

Surazhsky, T., and Elber, G. 2000. Arbitrary precise orientation specification for layout of text. In Proceedings. The Eighth Pacific Conference on Computer Graphics and Applications, Eurographics, 80--86.

Digital Library

[28]

Tondreau, B. 2009. Layout Essentials: 100 Design Principles for Using Grids. Rockport Publishers.

[29]

Vahe, 2009. Micrography: Text art and typography. gawno.com/2009/05/micrography-text-art-and-typography.

[30]

Wong, M. T., Zongker, D. E., and Salesin, D. H. 1998. Computer-generated floral ornament. In Proceedings of the 25th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, ACM, New York, NY, USA, SIGGRAPH '98, ACM.

[31]

Xu, J., and Kaplan, C. S. 2007. Calligraphic packing. In Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2007, ACM, New York, NY, USA, GI '07, ACM, 43--50.

[32]

Xu, J., and Kaplan, C. S. 2007. Image-guided maze construction. In ACM SIGGRAPH 2007 papers, ACM, New York, NY, USA, SIGGRAPH '07, ACM.

[33]

Xu, K., Cohen-Or, D., Ju, T., Liu, L., Zhang, H., Zhou, S., and Xiong, Y. 2009. Feature-aligned shape texturing. ACM Transactions on Graphics, (Proceedings SIGGRAPH Asia 2009) 28, 5, 108:1--108:7.

[34]

Xu, X., Zhang, L., and Wong, T.-T. 2010. Structure-based ascii art. ACM Trans. Graph. 29 (July), 52:1--52:10.

Digital Library

[35]

Zachrisson, B. 1965. Studies in the Legibility of Printed Text. Almqvist & Wiksell.

Cited By

Xie LShu XSu JWang YChen SQu H(2024)Creating Emordle: Animating Word Cloud for Emotion ExpressionIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2023.328639230:8(5198-5211)Online publication date: Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2023.3286392
Zhang JYang ZJin LLu ZYu J(2022)Creating Word Paintings Jointly Considering Semantics, Attention, and AestheticsACM Transactions on Applied Perception10.1145/353961019:3(1-21)Online publication date: 2-Sep-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3539610
Ma CSun Z(2022)Multilayered stitch generating for random-needle embroideryThe Visual Computer: International Journal of Computer Graphics10.1007/s00371-021-02195-238:11(3667-3679)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s00371-021-02195-2
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Digital micrography
1. Applied computing
  1. Arts and humanities
2. Computing methodologies
  1. Computer graphics
    1. Image manipulation
    2. Rendering

Recommendations

Digital micrography
SIGGRAPH '11: ACM SIGGRAPH 2011 papers

We present an algorithm for creating digital micrography images, or micrograms, a special type of calligrams created from minuscule text. These attractive text-art works successfully combine beautiful images with readable meaningful text. Traditional ...
Oriental Brush Simulation using 3 Dimensional Action
RACS '17: Proceedings of the International Conference on Research in Adaptive and Convergent Systems

Calligraphy is an art of beautiful handwriting seen widely in Oriental countries. The principle tool for oriental calligraphers is the oriental brush which has characteristics different from a pen. The purpose of this paper is to realize a simulation of ...
Real-Time Painting with an Expressive Virtual Chinese Brush

A physically based 3D virtual brush with bristles that bend and spread realistically like real brushes is used in Asian painting and calligraphy. Such an expressive brush lets artists create digital brushwork with spontaneity and spirit. Plasticity of ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Graphics

ACM Transactions on Graphics Volume 30, Issue 4

July 2011

829 pages

ISSN:0730-0301

EISSN:1557-7368

DOI:10.1145/2010324

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2011 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 25 July 2011

Published in TOG Volume 30, Issue 4

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

41
Total Citations
View Citations
1,764
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)29
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)3

Reflects downloads up to 30 Jul 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Xie LShu XSu JWang YChen SQu H(2024)Creating Emordle: Animating Word Cloud for Emotion ExpressionIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2023.328639230:8(5198-5211)Online publication date: Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2023.3286392
Zhang JYang ZJin LLu ZYu J(2022)Creating Word Paintings Jointly Considering Semantics, Attention, and AestheticsACM Transactions on Applied Perception10.1145/353961019:3(1-21)Online publication date: 2-Sep-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3539610
Ma CSun Z(2022)Multilayered stitch generating for random-needle embroideryThe Visual Computer: International Journal of Computer Graphics10.1007/s00371-021-02195-238:11(3667-3679)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s00371-021-02195-2
Makhanov S(2022)Vector fields for five-axis machining. A surveyThe International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology10.1007/s00170-022-09445-0122:2(533-575)Online publication date: 14-Aug-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-022-09445-0
Tian YLiu CXie Ljiao JYe Q(2021)Discretization-aware architecture searchPattern Recognition10.1016/j.patcog.2021.108186120:COnline publication date: 1-Dec-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.patcog.2021.108186
Hsu CWei LYou LZhang JBernhaupt RMueller FVerweij DAndres JMcGrenere JCockburn AAvellino IGoguey ABjørn PZhao SSamson BKocielnik R(2020)Autocomplete Element FieldsProceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3313831.3376248(1-13)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3313831.3376248
Hung SYao CFang YTan PLee RSheffer AChu H(2020)Micrography QR CodesIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2019.289689526:9(2834-2847)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2019.2896895
Baluja S(2020)Immediate gestalt: shapes, typography and (quite irregular) shape packingJournal of Mathematics and the Arts10.1080/17513472.2020.1855570(1-22)Online publication date: 14-Dec-2020
https://doi.org/10.1080/17513472.2020.1855570
Yang SLiu JYang WGuo Z(2019)Context-Aware Text-Based Binary Image Stylization and SynthesisIEEE Transactions on Image Processing10.1109/TIP.2018.287306428:2(952-964)Online publication date: Feb-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/TIP.2018.2873064
Ma CSun Z(2019)StitchGeneration: Modeling and creation of random-needle embroidery based on Markov chain modelMultimedia Tools and Applications10.1007/s11042-019-08053-778:23(34065-34094)Online publication date: 8-Aug-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-019-08053-7
Show More Cited By

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Article

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Issue’s Table of Contents