Rsizr - Advanced Online Image Editing

When it comes to editing images online, I have discovered several options, but many are disappointing in their lack of features and usability. For instance, I found EasyCropper a little too easy, having to restart the entire process every time I made the crop box the wrong size, since there is no way to resize it after you create it.

Now, there is Rsizr, which is a completely Flash based photo editing service that works with a variety of file formats, and seems to work rather quickly compared to the competition.

Here users can crop and scale images in an interface that is easy to navigate. In seconds, I found myself with an image already uploaded and editing.

What makes Rsizr more advanced is the new image resizing algorithm called seam carving which tries to keep intact areas in your image that you select by dividing a photo into slices. Within the available tools is one called Retargeting where users can use a brush to select either parts of the image to Preserve (keep intact for as long as possible during the resizing process, or which parts to Remove (first parts removed when scaling smaller and first to be multiplied when scaling larger).

You can see the capabilities of this feature in the images below, where if you look closely, Rsizr was able to completely remove a person from the photograph. There are many more photos in the Rsizr gallery that show off similar results.

The seam carving algorithm was developed by by Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir and is better described in their YouTube video.