As the ancient adage says "a picture speaks a thousand words", throughout history we have found compelling pieces of artwork from the pristine Magdalenian paintings to Michelengelo's frescoes on the ceilings of Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. These images have caste magic and enthralled generations alike.
So, when I started work on this intriguing subject called Image Processing a fortnight ago, I had little hope to match up to these legends but fortunately for me, the task at hand was made simpler by someone called OpenCV. How many of us have used Picasa yet have never witnessed the great man's (yes o instead of a) work? Well, most.
For once CV meant something other than a self advertising document. Computer and vision - two terms suggestive of an oxymoron yet carrying a mystic flavor of charm. Lena was my canvas (she is what Monalisa is to painters). This enigmatic face was first published in Plaboy magazine in 1972. With this my tryst with computer vision began which has captured my imaginations for past two weeks.
There is something about this discipline that fascinates me.
First assignment at hand was putting together a jigsaw puzzle for an event organized by I.I.T. - Kgp. Fragments or tiles needed reconstruction using computer vision techniques. First and final round belonged to me, my code outperformed every other candidate by some distance but a poor second round performance saw my overall tally take a beating and I had to contain myself with a modest ninth position.
It was a disappointing result but I had to dig deep to find few boons. Yes there was one. Since joining college this was the first time I have authored a C++ code of any significant length (1.5 kLoc). I have to pick up the ruins from the failure and toddle ahead though the winding road metaphorically as well as literally because my next assignment is with road maps.
Hopefully, my application for assisting and guiding city traffic will enable me to find the correct path as well.
