AutoPhotobook: using technology to streamline photobook creation

The design of a computer-assisted photobook authoring solution continues to be a challenging task, since consumers want four things from such an application: simplicity, quality, customizability and speed. Our AutoPhotobook solution uses technology to enable a system that preserves all four characteristics, providing high quality custom photobooks while keeping complexity and authoring time modest. We leverage both design knowledge and image understanding algorithms to automate time-consuming tasks like image selection, grouping, cropping and layout. This streamlines the initial creation phase, so the user is never stuck staring at a blank page wondering where to begin. Our composition engine then allows users to easily edit the book: adding, swapping or moving objects, exploring different page layouts and themes, and even dynamically adjusting the aspect ratio of the final book. Our technologies enable even novice users to easily create aesthetically pleasing photobooks that tell their underlying stories. AutoPhotobook provides advances over prior solutions in the following areas: automatic image selection and theme-based image grouping; dynamic page layout including text support; automatic cropping; design-preserving background artwork transformation; and a simple yet powerful user interface for personalization. In this paper, we present these technologies and illustrate how they work together to improve the photobook authoring process.