Stylization and Abstraction of Photographs
Author(s): Doug DeCarlo, Anthony Santella.
Proceedings: 29th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques (SIGGRAPH '02), pp. 769--776, San Antonio, Texas, ACM Press,
2002.
[BibTeX] 
Abstract:
Good information design depends on clarifying the meaningful
structure in an image. We describe a computational approach to
stylizing and abstracting photographs that explicitly responds to
this design goal. Our system transforms images into a line-drawing
style using bold edges and large regions of constant color. To do
this, it represents images as a hierarchical structure of parts and
boundaries computed using state-of-the-art computer vision. Our
system identifies the meaningful elements of this structure using a
model of human perception and a record of a user’s eye movements
in looking at the photo; the system renders a new image using transformations
that preserve and highlight these visual elements. Our
method thus represents a new alternative for non-photorealistic rendering
both in its visual style, in its approach to visual form, and in
its techniques for interaction.