Content-aware image resizing tool

A while ago I heard about an amazing new technology for resizing images that was aware of the actual photo’s contents when applying the new size to the image (see video on the ‘Extras’ tab above).

This resizing technology sounded so incredible that I was excited to see it had been ported it to Windows and given a graphical user interface. The results, however, are far from perfect: in fact, I found Seam Carving GUI to be extremely disappointing.

The program doesn’t require installation and looks easy to use. Load the image, select the area you want to keep or remove when resizing, then select the target size. But problems don’t take long to appear: firstly, selecting the area would be much easier if you could use a real selection tool, rather than a clunky-feeling brush tool. What’s more, the program doesn’t include predefined resizing templates, nor does it preserve the aspect ratio. Finally, there are some options and settings on Seam Carving GUI that I have no idea how to use and – even worse – are not properly documented.

Unfortunately this means that during the whole testing process for Seam Carving GUI I couldn’t get a single photo to be resized properly: they were all badly distorted, as if I had applied a wave effect instead of resizing them.

I definitely hope the algorithm is improved and a Help section is added to future versions of Seam Carving GUI. So far, I can only say I expected much more from this program.

Seam Carving GUI is a sadly disappointing resizing tool that tries to apply a extraordinary content-aware algorithm with poor results.