Inpainting: Bridging Gaps in Computer Vision

By Fouad Sabry

What is Inpainting

Inpainting is a conservation process where damaged, deteriorated, or missing parts of an artwork are filled in to present a complete image. This process is commonly used in image restoration. It can be applied to both physical and digital art mediums such as oil or acrylic paintings, chemical photographic prints, sculptures, or digital images and video.

How you will benefit

(I) Insights, and validations about the following topics:

Chapter 1: Inpainting

Chapter 2: Texture synthesis

Chapter 3: Conservation and restoration of cultural property

Chapter 4: Historic paint analysis

Chapter 5: Conservation science (cultural property)

Chapter 6: Conservation and restoration of paintings

Chapter 7: Conservation and restoration of panel paintings

Chapter 8: Conservation and restoration of Pompeian frescoes

Chapter 9: Conservation and restoration of ancient Greek pottery

Chapter 10: Conservation-restoration of Thomas Eakins' The Gross Clinic

(II) Answering the public top questions about inpainting.

(III) Real world examples for the usage of inpainting in many fields.

Who this book is for

Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information for any kind of Inpainting.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Billion Knowledgeable
• Release date: Apr 28, 2024

Book preview

Chapter 1: Inpainting

To restore an artwork that has been damaged, deteriorated, or is missing sections, conservators will often resort to inpainting. In the field of image restoration, this method is frequently employed. It is applicable to both traditional media like oil or acrylic paintings and digital media like digital photos and video.

Traditional inpainting, which has its roots in three-dimensional artwork like paintings and sculptures, is carried out by an art conservator who has studied the piece in detail to ascertain the mediums and techniques used, the potential risks of treatments, and the ethical appropriateness of treatment.

Pietro Edwards (1744-1821), Director of the Restoration of the Public Pictures in Venice, Italy, is credited with pioneering the contemporary practice of inpainting. Edwards employed a scientific method to restore the painting while keeping the artist's vision in mind. Inpainting has been adapted to use digital media since the mid-1990s. Digital inpainting, often known as picture or video interpolation, is an estimating technique that involves the use of software that employs complex algorithms to reconstruct missing or damaged visual data.

Any inpainting technique or treatment used on a physical or digital work must be either reversible or easily recognizable from the original content of the artwork if it is to protect the artwork's authenticity.

Before Inpainting can be rationalized, there are a number of ethical factors to address. Many factors influence how much and what kind of inpainting is considered ethically acceptable. Inpainting raises ethical problems similar to those raised by other conservation techniques, such as their permanence, reversibility, and record-keeping.

Any effort made to make up for a loss should be recorded in medical reports and can be picked up with standard diagnostic tools. Payments for cultural property should be reversible and should not obscure or remove elements that are integral to the property's identity or alter its aesthetic, intellectual, or physical qualities.

The methods used in the inpainting approach vary according to the final objective and the nature of the image. The holes in both real and digital artwork are filled in quite different ways.

When using inpainting, it is imperative that thorough records be kept of the source images' condition, any treatments used and their justifications, and any copies made (e.g. original digital images).

File:Piero della Francesca - Scene after and before restoration - WGA17592.jpg |thumb|Piero della Francesca - Scene after and before restoration]

The origin of inpainting lies in the conservation of previously painted artwork. the term inpainting refers to the compensation of paint losses - aiming at the recomposition of the missing sections of an image in order to improve its perception by making damages less evident, according to the encyclopedia article on painting conservation and restoration. In other words, the goal of inpainting is to improve the overall appearance of the piece of art by replacing any lost or damaged areas with new ones using the same techniques and media as the original artist.

In order to restore works as closely as possible to their original visual appearance, conservators employ a wide variety of methods based on their knowledge of the painting techniques of various artists, the composition of paints used historically, and the time spent carefully studying the medium one is working with.

Additional Inpainting Advice:

How the hole is filled depends on the picture as a whole; inpainting is meant to restore the work's unity, so it's important to consider how the new section will fit in with the rest of the picture.

The gap should be filled with the same structural elements as the surrounding area. All contour lines that reach the gap's edge must continue on into the void.

Although the specific materials don't have to be the same, the different regions inside a gap are filled with colors matching those of its boundaries, as determined by the contour lines. It is crucial to check for potential reactivity if different materials are to be employed.

To prevent the viewer's attention from immediately being directed to the in-painted area, artists add texture to their works by painting fine details.

The book Inpainting Techniques by Helmut Ruhemann, published by Jessell, is packed with options for and instructions on how to preserve the quality of Oil and early Tempera paintings.

Digital images and movies can often be restored with the help of various tools. Adobe Photoshop is the go-to program for digital photo editing. Since digital data may be copied, it is recommended that any necessary corrections be made to a copy while the originals are safely stored away. The digitalization of historical photographs and the advancements in digital photography have made inpainting a fully automated process that can be applied to digital images. The inpainting methods can be used for more than just fixing scratches; they can also be used for things like taking out unwanted objects or words from films or photos. After video matting has been completed, inpainting is typically done for visual effects videos. Not only that, but they show up in places like picture compression and super resolution.

It is used in the film restoration process in photography and film to prevent further damage to the film or to restore existing damage (e.g. physical damage such as cracks in photographs or scratches and dust spots in film or chemical damage resulting in image loss; see infrared cleaning). In addition to fixing common photo problems like red eye and date stamps, it may be used to selectively erase specific elements for more dramatic impact.

If any image blocks are lost during encoding and transmission, for instance in a streaming video, this method can be used to restore the missing data. Video logo removal is another possible application.

Inpainting based on a deep learning neural network can be utilized for image decensoring.

Image in the Depths When a trained deep learning model is not an option, prior based techniques might be employed for digital picture inpainting.

In the literature, you'll find that there are primarily three categories of 2D picture inpainting methods. Inpainting techniques include structural (or geometric) inpainting, inpainting with texture, and a combination of the two. Similar to how actual photos are recovered, all of these inpainting techniques use the knowledge of the known or non-destroyed image parts to fill in the gap.

Images with sharp, well-defined edges can benefit from structural or geometric inpainting.

Textural inpainting is more effective with highly textured images, while structural/geometric inpainting is useful for repairing smooth images.

The goal of combined structural and textural inpainting methods is to reconstruct the missing structure and texture of a picture at the same time. The boundaries between picture areas include a great deal of structural information, as do most portions of an image (texture and structure). This is what happens when you combine several textures. For this reason, cutting-edge techniques aim to merge structural and textural inpainting.

To achieve a seamless appearance, the standard approach employs differential equations (such Laplace's equation) with Dirichlet boundary conditions. If the missing data is contained within the