Snapfish Lab
| Company type | Research platform |
|---|---|
| Industry | Imaging software, Research and development |
| Founder | Hewlett-Packard (HP Labs) |
| Products | Experimental imaging utilities and tools |
| Parent | Hewlett-Packard (HP Labs) |
Snapfish Lab was an online platform and application framework developed by HP Labs to present cutting-edge imaging research and collect feedback from users.
Overview
This website offered a variety of experimental imaging utilities. Users had the option to experiment with these tools using sample images or, after signing in with their Snapfish accounts, apply them directly to their personal photo libraries. A dedicated forum facilitated user discussions and feedback collection.
Company Structure
Snapfish Lab was managed by HP Labs, the innovation and advanced research branch of Hewlett-Packard.
Imaging Tools
Prominent experimental features included:
- Poster Creator which merged several images into a single large layout through an automated Blocked Recursive Image Composition technique, enabling users to modify layouts and edit individual photos.
- Auto Crop utilized face recognition combined with proprietary saliency detection to crop images, focusing on key elements while maintaining compositional integrity.
- Note Capture corrected perspective distortions found in photographs of textual or graphical content taken from pages or whiteboards.
- Clear Note improved upon Note Capture by applying watershed segmentation to separate foreground writing, transforming backgrounds to white for enhanced print clarity.
- Fisheye Visualization presented photo collections using interactive fisheye distortion, offering both overview thumbnails and zoomed-in perspectives.
- Automatic Horizon Alignment identified nearly horizontal lines within images to rotate them for a straightened horizon, enhancing the alignment of casual snapshots.
See also
Additional corporate research initiatives include: