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Digi D ürer — a digital engraving system

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Abstract

A variety of halftone methods for reproducing gray-level images on bilevel display media have been proposed. The output of even the best of these falls far short of the quality achieved on similar resolution media in man-made engravings. We introduceDig i Dürer — a digital engraving/halftoning system. For a gray-level image input, the system produces a bilevel (black and white only) picture, which has the appearance of an engraving of the input. The system produces high-quality output, even when the graphic elements of the halftone are visible, and both the quality and style of the output can be improved or customized either by using further information on the image content or by interactive user intervention. The heart ofDig i Dürer is a curve evolution algorithm generating halftones by controlling the density of line elements, which are the level contours of a potential field induced by the image via an Eikonal equation. Since the basic version of the system produces rather rough results, further capabilities were added to allow for user intervention and the use of image content information. Extensions to graphic elements other than lines are also feasible.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Department, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

    Yachin Pnueli & Alfred M. Bruckstein

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  1. Yachin Pnueli
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  2. Alfred M. Bruckstein
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Pnueli, Y., Bruckstein, A.M. Digi D ürer — a digital engraving system. The Visual Computer 10, 277–292 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01901584

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