Object-based visual effects by using multi-focus images and its real-time implementation

We propose a novel approach to image content manipulation which produces special visual effects on objects in a scene. It uses multiple differently focused images and generates a new image by linear filtering of them. The proposed scheme enables us to arbitrarily handle object based visual effects such as blurring, enhancement, shifting, etc. The novelty of this work is that it does not require any segmentation of objects in the scene although it generates special effects selectively applied to the objects. In this paper, the principle and the derivation of the filters are described, the results obtained for real images and its real-time implementation are shown.