Process

I simulate a miniaturization effect using two very simple operations:

First, I increase the saturation of the image. This gives the photos vibrant colors that are closer to the vibrant painted colors of miniatures. All images are normalized so that they have the same average saturation; this gives good results for most images, but images with a lot of white content tend to become oversaturated.

Then, the user is prompted to select a polygon as the focus region of the photo. Areas farther from this polygon are blurred to a greater extent than areas closer to the polygon. This is done by blurring the entire image by a little bit, then masking with the area of the polygon and combining the unblurred and blurred images. This is repeated iteratively while expanding the polygon to make the farthest areas the blurriest.

Results on Required Images

Results on My Images

Results on Images from the Internet

Original image from Dean Forbes on Flickr.

Original image from Hoganpmo on Flickr.