We present a deep neural network for removing undesirable shading features from an unconstrained portrait image, recovering the underlying texture. Our training scheme incorporates three regularization strategies: masked loss, to emphasize high-frequency features; soft-shadow which improves sensitivity subtle changes in lighting; and shading-offset estimation, supervise separation of method dem...

The multiple active contours (snakes) are widely used in image processing to extract the feature of interest. However, initialization of the active contours is still an open problem. This paper proposes a new completely automatic initialization of snakes based on a combination of Phrase Portrait Analysis (PPA), K-means clustering and multi-stage evolution of the active contours. The proposed me...

The difference between international politics as it actually is and a rational theory derived from it is like the difference between a photograph and a painted portrait. The photograph shows everything that can be seen by the naked eye; the painted portrait does not show everything that can be seen by the naked eye, but it shows, or at least seems to show, one thing that the naked eye cannot se...