Sylvain Paris, Adobe

Research Scientist at Adobe

Sylvain Paris obtained his PhD at INRIA in Grenoble, France in 2004 under the supervision of Dr. François Sillion. Then, he moved to Cambridge Massachusetts where he worked with Prof. Frédo Durand at MIT as a post-doctoral associate. Since 2007, he is a researcher at Adobe. His research interests are computational photography, hair modeling, and related topics.

Talk Synopsis
Beyond the Piece of Cardboard: Learning to Adjust Photographs

Master photographers such as Ansel Adams have demonstrated that retouching pictures is critical to obtaining a stunning rendition of a picture. In traditional film photography, this involves tools such as a piece of cardboard to dodge and burn the print as well as a careful choice of chemicals and paper. This is a long and painstaking process that requires a great deal of know-how. With digital photography, we have now access to powerful options such as instant undo, unlimited layering, and sophisticated filters. However, despite these improvements, achieving a compelling look remains a challenging task. In some sense, we have made the piece of cardboard more powerful, which is great and enables a wider range of effects, but the retouching process as a whole remains mostly unassisted. In this talk, I will present my research on photographic style transfer and machine-learning-based retouching that focuses on understanding the notion of photographic look and helping users achieve a specific visual style. This work is in collaboration with Soonmin Bae, Vladimir Bychkovsky, and Frédo Durand at MIT, and Eric Chan at Adobe.