AI image cropping and semitransparent text background

[mhors]

There are two more things I am trying to do with my pi3d.

1. Maximise horizontal screen use with two vertical pictures or one horizontal picture. As many of my photos come from different cameras, they have different aspect ratios. The pi3d displays them correctly and adds black borders as needed. Google Home displays the photo maximising the subject matter and cropping less relevant material. Is there an AI way to maximise photos subject on the screen or is preprocessing the photos using Adobe or similar the only way?

2. White clock and picture text on top of the photo often is hard to read. Is it possible to add a semitransparent solid background to the clock and picture text?

[paddywwoof]

Hi, If matting is off and fit is False images should be cropped to the screen in a simplistic way (is this what Google home does?) The pi3d portrait pairs system is a little simplistic too

picframe/src/picframe/viewer_display.py

Line 278 in e4314db

def __create_image_pair(self, im1, im2):

I think it makes the two images equal widths but doesn't seem to align them centrally. Maybe this should be reviewed for the major rewrite @helgeerbe is doing.

To get intelligent cropping you might be able to use AI but it often only really works with fairly low resolution images. Plus, we probably all have a moral obligation to restrict our "recreational" use of a technology that is rapidly becoming the largest electricity consumer in the world!

[mhors]

Thank you. Fair enough about AI. Will preprocess the photos to the exact aspect ratio.

Any options in pi3d to apply a semitransparent background to text that overlays the photo? I suppose, I could add this darker bar in the preprocessing also, but wonder if there is a setting.

[paddywwoof]

Hi, yes I meant to reply about that too. There is a darker background behind the text. It fades out so it's not so obvious. I can't remember if there's one for the time, but it would be easy enough to do. I've noticed the difficulty reading the time in the past so it probably would be a generally appreciated improvement... But it will probably be pushed into the next generation of picframe!

Paddy

PS I vaguely think Wolfgang wrote about a simple script to resize images while preserving data, on thedigitalpicturefram

[mhors]

Thanks. Can you point me in the direction of what python script sets the text background colour. Happy to try out and update here.

[paddywwoof]

The text background sprite is created here

picframe/src/picframe/viewer_display.py

Lines 559 to 567 in e4314db

	if self.__text_bkg_hgt:
	bkg_hgt = int(min(self.__display.width, self.__display.height) * self.__text_bkg_hgt)
	text_bkg_array = np.zeros((bkg_hgt, 1, 4), dtype=np.uint8)
	text_bkg_array[:, :, 3] = np.linspace(0, 120, bkg_hgt).reshape(-1, 1)
	text_bkg_tex = pi3d.Texture(text_bkg_array, blend=True, mipmap=False, free_after_load=True)
	self.__text_bkg = pi3d.Sprite(w=self.__display.width,
	h=bkg_hgt, y=-int(self.__display.height) // 2 + bkg_hgt // 2, z=4.0)
	self.__text_bkg.set_draw_details(self.__flat_shader, [text_bkg_tex])

If you're not used to using numpy it's probably fairly opaic, but lines 561 and 562 essentially create an image one pixel wide and 0.25 of the screen height. The RGB value is set to (0, 0, 0) i.e. black. and the alpha value is set to 120 (out of 255) at the bottom to 0 at the top.

At the moment the clock text has a settable opacity but it doesn't have a background system. It could be done the same was the text at the bottom but there is actually an option in the pi3d.FixedString.__init__() method to add a colour. So you could change

picframe/src/picframe/viewer_display.py

Lines 485 to 489 in e4314db

	self.__clock_overlay = pi3d.FixedString(self.__font_file, clock_text, font_size=self.__clock_text_sz,
	shader=self.__flat_shader, width=width, shadow_radius=3,
	justify=self.__clock_justify, color=(255, 255, 255, opacity))
	self.__clock_overlay.sprite.set_alpha(self.get_brightness())
	x = (width - self.__clock_overlay.sprite.width) // 2

to add

                                                    justify=self.__clock_justify, color=(255, 255, 255, opacity),
                                                    background_color=(0, 0, 0, 120)) ## back alpha around 0.5
            self.__clock_overlay.sprite.set_alpha(self.get_brightness())

I've not tried this so there might be other issues, as well as the hard edge around the time. Also this is all in the process of being rewritten!

Let me know how you get on.