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Sylvain Paris
Sylvain Paris
-- (617) 219 2153
What's new?
June, 25th: Added our EGSR paper on estimation of hair appearance and our tech report on visual histories.
May, 29th: Added our SIGGRAPH paper on visibility and vector graphics.
April, 15th: Added a tech report on image compositing.

Useful Information

• Research Interest •

My work mainly focuses on extracting information from photographs and videos. My goal is to obtain useful data for Computer Graphics, i.e. suitable for rendering new images. During my PhD with François Sillion at INRIA, I developed new solutions to image-based modeling, mainly shape reconstruction from image sequences and recovery of the 3D geometry of hair.

Since my post-doc at MIT with Frédo Durand, I am also interested in computational photography. I am looking at signal-processing techniques to apply them to digital photographs and videos. Compared to traditional film photography, this unveils a large spectrum of possibilities to modify and enhance the picture content. Conversely, photography-related applications raise specific issues such as user interaction and photorealism, and cast a new light upon known signal-processing methods.

I am now a researcher at Adobe, working in the Advanced Technology Labs where I pursue my research on computational photography and image-based modeling.

• Internship •

If you are interested in doing an internship with me, here is what you need to know:

So far, I have been lucky to work with the following interns:

Publications

Selected publications are highlighted with a thumbnail. Boxed publications without thumbnail are important milestones that have been extended in a journal paper.

My co-authors (by alphabetical order): Frederick Aliaga, Shai Avidan, Soonmin Bae, Nicolas Bonneel, Hector Briceño, Will Chang, Jiawen Chen, Matthieu Cunzi, Gilles Debunne, George Drettakis, Frédo Durand, Elmar Eisemann, Jean-Dominique Gascuel, Eugene Hsu, Wojciech Jarosz, Steve Johnson, Pierre Kornprobst, Oleg I. Kozhushnyan, Maxime Lhuillier, Wojciech Matusik, Tom Mertens, Long Quan, Craig Scull, François Sillion, Sara Su, Joëlle Thollot, Jack Tumblin, Michiel van de Panne, Gang Zeng, Matthias Zwicker.

Access by year: 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002.

• 2009 •

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Single Photo Estimation of Hair Appearance
Nicolas Bonneel, Sylvain Paris, Michiel van de Panne, Frédo Durand, George Drettakis
Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings of the Eurographics Symposium on Rendering '09)
  • We provide our input photos, the retrieved parameters, and the corresponding renderings in supplemental material.
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A Visibility Algorithm for Converting 3D Meshes into Editable 2D Vector Graphics
Elmar Eisemann, Sylvain Paris, and Frédo Durand
ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH'09 conference)
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QuickSelect: History-Based Selection Expansion
Sara Su, Sylvain Paris, and Frédo Durand
Proceedings of the Graphics Interface conference (GI'09)
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A Fast Approximation of the Bilateral Filter using a Signal Processing Approach
Sylvain Paris and Frédo Durand
International Journal of Computer Vision (IJCV'09)
  • Our fast bilateral filter webpage provides details, code, data, and more.
  • This article extends our conference paper and is a revised version of our technical report. Compared to the ECCV article, it includes new discussions, comparisons, and validations, and extensions to cross bilateral filtering and color images.
  • Our SIGGRAPH'07 paper builds upon this article and shows that the higher-dimensional image representation that we introduce can be turned into a data structure useful a variety of other edge-aware tools. We also show that the corresponding algorithms, including the bilateral filter, are highly parallel and can be implemented on graphics hardware.
  • All the images shown in the figures are available as supplemental material (23MB).
  • The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com.
Interactive Visual Histories for Vector Graphics. Sara L. Su, Sylvain Paris, Frederick Aliaga, Criag Scull, Steve Johnson, and Frédo Durand. MIT technical report, June 2009 (MIT-CSAIL-TR-2009-031). pdf (1.9MB) | project page
A Perceptually Motivated Method to Control Reconstruction Errors in Gradient-based Image Compositing. Sylvain Paris. Adobe technical report, March 2009. pdf (1.7MB)

• 2008 •

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Edge-preserving Smoothing and Mean-shift Segmentation of Video Streams
Sylvain Paris
Processing of the European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV'08)
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Hair Photobooth: Geometric and Photometric Acquisition of Real Hairstyles
Sylvain Paris, Will Chang, Wojciech Jarosz, Oleg Kozhushnyan, Wojciech Matusik, Matthias Zwicker, and Frédo Durand
ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH'08 conference)
  • The paper webpage provides additional material.
  • This work extends our SIGGRAPH'04 article in many ways: a more accurate and more complete setup, an inference method to retrieve the hidden geometry, a model-driven image-based rendering technique,...
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Light Mixture Estimation for Spatially Varying White Balance
Eugene Hsu, Tom Mertens, Sylvain Paris, Shai Avidan, and Frédo Durand
ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH'08 conference)

• 2007 •

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Real-time Edge-Aware Image Processing with the Bilateral Grid
Jiawen Chen, Sylvain Paris, and Frédo Durand
ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH'07 conference)
  • This article focuses on an image representation inspired from our ECCV'06 paper. This data structure can be used for a variety of image processing tools such as bilateral filtering, scribble interpolation, edge-preserving painting, and contrast enhancement. The corresponding algorithms can be efficiently parallelized on graphics hardware.
  • More details on the bilateral grid webpage.
  • Hindsight: My paper on video streams further motivates the use of the exponential decay in Section 3.5.
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A Topological Approach to Hierarchical Segmentation using Mean Shift
Sylvain Paris and Frédo Durand
Proceedings of the IEEE conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR'07)
  • C++ code is available.
  • We tested our algorithm on videos with 6 seconds of the pylon sequence (from frame 80 to frame 229).
  • In the supplemental material (tar.gz, zip), we provide results on high-resolution images and on the Berkeley benchmark.
  • My paper on video streams extends this work to real-time video segmentation.
  • Hindsight: Segmentations done on-the-fly are actually similar to off-line segmentations only at grid resolution. Differences may exist at pixel resolution. Thanks to Varsha Hedau from UIUC for pointing out differences.
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Accurate and Scalable Surface Representation and Reconstruction from Images
Gang Zeng, Sylvain Paris, Long Quan, and François Sillion
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI'07)
  • This article extends our ECCV'04 paper and our ICCV'05 paper. A previous version appeared as a technical report.
  • Our patchwork approach is demonstrated to have optimal spatial and temporal complexities in terms of object area and resolution. We also formally study the link between the proposed local optimization and existing global techniques (weak membrane, level set, and graph cut).
  • New results illustrate various aspects: influence of the parameters, differences between propagation (presented at ECCV'04) and carving (ICCV'05), and failure cases.

• 2006 •

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Two-scale Tone Management for Photographic Look
Soonmin Bae, Sylvain Paris, and Frédo Durand
ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH'06 conference)
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A Surface Reconstruction Method Using Global Graph Cut Optimization
Sylvain Paris, François Sillion, and Long Quan
International Journal on Computer Vision (IJCV'06)
  • This article is an extended version of our ACCV'04 paper.
  • Our ECCV'04, ICCV'05, and PAMI papers present a versatile technique to use the optimization method described in this article to recover objects with arbitrary shapes.
  • The min-cut code is available.
  • The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com.
A Fast Approximation of the Bilateral Filter using a Signal Processing Approach. Sylvain Paris and Frédo Durand. European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV'06). pdf (3MB) | ps (9.5MB) | ppt (2.7MB)
  • Our fast bilateral filter webpage provides details, code, data, and more.
  • We have extended this article in an IJCV article that includes new discussions, comparisons, and validations, and extensions to cross bilateral filtering and color images.
A Fast Approximation of the Bilateral Filter using a Signal Processing Approach. Sylvain Paris and Frédo Durand. MIT technical report 2006 (MIT-CSAIL-TR-2006-073). A revised version appears in IJCV. fast bilateral filter webpage | high-res. pdf (25MB) | low-res. pdf (2MB)
Methods for 3D Reconstruction from Multiple Images. Sylvain Paris. Invited talk at the Underwater Imaging Workshop part of the Oceans'06 Conference. This presentation reviews some of the recent techniques to acquire the 3D geometry of an object using images. Full-length references are in the note section of the slides. I recommend reading Section 2.2 of my PhD dissertation and this survey by Seitz and colleagues as a complement to this presentation. ppt (6MB) | pdf (2.7MB)

• 2005 •

Progressive Surface Reconstruction from Images using a Local Prior. Gang Zeng, Sylvain Paris, Long Quan, and François Sillion. International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV'05). pdf (1.4MB) | ps (22MB) | gallery
  • Our PAMI paper extends this work with additional studies and results.
  • This paper stems from the same inspiration as our ECCV'04 paper (reconstruction by patches) but it exposes a different technique and it provides additional formal studies. In short, we do not need points to drive the process, the visibility is better evaluated using a voxel representation, and we guarantee the smoothness of the resulting model.
  • The optimization technique we use is detailed in our IJCV'06 paper.
Accurate and Scalable Surface Representation and Reconstruction from Images. Gang Zeng, Sylvain Paris, Long Quan, and Francois Sillion. MIT technical report 2005 (MIT-CSAIL-TR-2005-076). A revised version has been accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. It extends our ECCV'04 paper and our ICCV'05 paper. pdf (2.8MB) | ps (2.9MB)
A Computational Darkroom for Black-and-White Photography. Soonmin Bae, Sylvain Paris, and Frédo Durand. Symposium on Computational Photography and Video (SCPV'05). This poster presents an early version of our SIGGRAPH'06 paper. pdf (19MB)

• 2004 •

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Extraction of Three-dimensional Information from Images -- Application to Computer Graphics
Sylvain Paris
Ph.D. thesis from Université Joseph Fourier (Grenoble, France) 2004
  • This dissertation compiles my work on 3D reconstruction (ECCV'04 and IJCV'06), face relighting (PG'03) and capture of hair geometry (SIGGRAPH'04).
  • Compared to the papers, there are extended discussions of the previous work, more technical details and additional studies.
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Capture of Hair Geometry from Multiple Images
Sylvain Paris, Hector Briceño, and François Sillion
ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH'04 conference)
  • The hairstyles shown in the article are available. Just contact one of the authors with a short description of your project (we are interested in the use of our data).
  • Some image-processing code is also available.
  • Florence Bertails and colleagues have published at GI'05 the rendering technique used in the last slide of our presentation.
  • Our work is inspired by the hair acquisition technique of Stéphane Grabli and colleagues at GI'02.
  • Yichen Wei and colleagues have published at SIGGRAPH'05 another method on acquisition of hair geometry. Compared to our paper, they use several viewpoints and require only a well lighted environment. The paper is available on Long Quan's page.
Surface Reconstruction by Propagating 3D Stereo Data in Multiple 2D Images. Gang Zeng, Sylvain Paris, Long Quan, and Maxime Lhuillier. Proceedings of the European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV'04). pdf (0.8MB) | more...
  • Our PAMI paper extends this article with additional studies and results.
  • Our ICCV'05 paper builds upon this work: It introduces a voxel representation instead of points to improve the visibility estimation and it studies the smoothness of the resulting surface.
  • The optimization technique we use is exposed in our IJCV'06 paper.
A Surface Reconstruction Method Using Global Graph Cut Optimization. Sylvain Paris, François Sillion, and Long Quan. Proceedings of the Asian Conference on Computer Vision (ACCV'04). An extended version appears in the International Journal on Computer Vision. pdf (0.6MB) | ps.gz (7MB) | more...
Robust Carving for Non-Lambertian Objects. Gang Zeng, Sylvain Paris, and Long Quan. Proceedings of the International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR'04). pdf (415kB) | more...

• 2003 •

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Lightweight Face Relighting
Sylvain Paris, François Sillion, and Long Quan
Proceedings of the Pacific Graphics conference (PG'03)
  • The described rendering technique is somewhat old fashioned. Readers will still be interested in the proposed analysis of the skin reflectance.
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Dynamic Canvas for Non-Photorealistic Walkthroughs
Matthieu Cunzi, Joëlle Thollot, Sylvain Paris, Gilles Debunne, Jean-Dominique Gascuel, and Frédo Durand
Proceedings of the Graphics Interface conference (GI'03)
  • The project page provides a lot of supplemental material (video, texture, code).
Robust Acquisition of 3D Informations from Short Image Sequences. Sylvain Paris and François Sillion. Graphical Models (GM'03). Our IJCV'06 paper extends this work with min cuts. pdf (0.5MB) | ps (3.5MB) | more...
A Volumetric Reconstruction Method from Multiple Calibrated Views using Global Graph Cut Optimization. Sylvain Paris and François Sillion, Long Quan. INRIA technical report 4843 (2003). See our IJCV'06 paper for the latest version. pdf (0.7MB) | more...
Optimisation à base de flot de graphe pour l'acquisition d'informations 3D à partir de séquences d'images. Sylvain Paris and François Sillion. Revue Internationale de CFAO et d'Informatique Graphique (2003). See our IJCV'06 paper for the latest version. pdf (0.4MB) | more...
Study of Volumetric Methods for Face Reconstruction. Gang Zeng, Sylvain Paris, Maxime Lhuillier, and Long Quan. Proceedings of the IEEE Intelligent Automation Conference (IAC'03). pdf (0.3MB) | more...

• 2002 •

Optimisation à base de flot de graphe pour l'acquisition d'informations 3D à partir de séquences d'images. Sylvain Paris and François Sillion. Actes des journées de l'AFIG (AFIG'02). (This meeting has no review process). Our IJCV'06 paper extends this work with min cuts. pdf (0.7MB) | more...
Robust Acquisition of 3D Informations from Short Image Sequences. Sylvain Paris and François Sillion. Proceedings of the Pacific Graphics conference (PG'02). See our IJCV'06 paper for the latest version. pdf (0.7MB) | more...

Courses

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A Gentle Introduction to Bilateral Filtering and its Applications
Sylvain Paris, Pierre Kornprobst, Jack Tumblin, and Frédo Durand
Class at ACM SIGGRAPH'08
Tutorial at IEEE CVPR'08
Course at ACM SIGGRAPH'07
  • Course notes, slides, references, and source code are available on the course webpage.
ASM x86 Sylvain Paris. I have been a teaching assistant for a course on the x86 assembly language. The course notes are in French and some links are dead. One will still be interested in the commented code snippets.

Research Material

• C++ Code •

I have developed these packages to implement some of techniques exposed in my papers. They may help you to get your own implementation. Sample code is included in the documentation. You may need the basic tools to use some packages.

• Illustrations •

thumbnail Mean-Shift Segmentation and Morse Theory
  • The beginning of this video shows how mean-shift segmentation is defined and illustrates some concepts of Morse theory.
thumbnail Spherical Harmonics
  • Have you ever wonder how SH of order greater than 3 look like? This page shows up to order 10.
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PDE filters

• Useful Links •

Here is a collection of websites that I often use. If you do not know them, take some time to have look, you will not regret.

Programming Tools for C++

Bookmarks

Miscellaneous

• Old Projects •

These are some past projects (mostly undergrade and Masters assignments). They are written in French. I do not maintain any of these. However, code is provided and might be useful.

Personal Area

• Chinese Painting •

thumbnail Nelson did a Chinese painting of my name when I was an intern in Hong Kong. He used his virtual brush. He comments the painting on his webpage.

• Photography •

Film

Thanks to Eugene, I have experienced film photography and darkroom development. Here are scanned versions of my two pictures (click to enlarge):
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Portraits

Eugene has shot a few portaits of me with my digital camera. The top picture is one of them. See the other portraits.

Digital

Here is a selection of my pictures. So far, there is only 2008 but more will come with time.
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