Seam carving - Content Aware Image Resizing
 

I heard about this not ten minutes ago, despite the presentation apparently given at SIGGRAPH '07. I'm always on top of things. I did a search, anyway, for both of the phrases in this thread's title, and didn't see anything, so I figured some of you might be interested. If I'm wrong, so sue me. Then, kindly, point me to an existing thread.

First watch the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NcIJXTlugc

Then check the Wikipedia entry for links to some actual implementations (I just grabbed IntuImage, for starters): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seam_carving

I can barely "Hello, World!" my way out of a wet paper bag, but this is the kind of thing that makes me want to pick up some more programming books and learn a thing or two. Can you imagine this applied to video in the form of, say, a VirtualDub plugin? Even just for messing with background plates in effects work, I could see this kind of software being incredibly useful, and endlessly fun just to play with.