Image quilting for texture synthesis and transfer

TLDR

The authors aim to generate novel visual appearances by stitching small patches from existing images and to re‑render an image in the style of another image. They introduce image quilting, a fast, simple algorithm that stitches patches to synthesize textures and transfer textures between objects, operating directly on images without 3D data. They demonstrate that the method can re‑render an image in the style of a different image.

Abstract

We present a simple image-based method of generating novel visual appearance in which a new image is synthesized by stitching together small patches of existing images. We call this process image quilting. First, we use quilting as a fast and very simple texture synthesis algorithm which produces surprisingly good results for a wide range of textures. Second, we extend the algorithm to perform texture transfer — rendering an object with a texture taken from a different object. More generally, we demonstrate how an image can be re-rendered in the style of a different image. The method works directly on the images and does not require 3D information.