Computer generated and photographic images

ThesisPhotography is undergoing a revolution, as profound as when glass plates were replaced by acetate film. No longer are photographers reliant on darkrooms, and often poisonous chemicals to process their films. Images can now be recorded in digital form using conventional cameras fitted with special backs containing electronic form, loaded into a computer where they can be enhanced, manipulated or analysed, and the output directly to printing plates, or high quality paper printer. There is no fundamental change in the way pictures are taken - photographers still need the skills of lighting and composition, but now have far greater control over the image. By the same token their role is changing, no longer are they just photographers, they require to transmit the image via a computer, and a result on paper. The barriers between printer, photographer and designer are becoming blurred. This script explains the new technologies of electronic imaging. It looks at the past, future, predictions and the advantages and disadvantages between traditional and digital photography. A range of cameras and printers are also mentioned. It also shows how I went about getting to my final images. There are also a variety of images included to show you, the reader, what results can be achieved. Although the traditional skills of the photographer will not change, anyone working in the field of imageing needs to change their working methods if they are to survive in this rapid expanding field of technology

Compression and SSD: Where and How?

Abstract Compression is widely used in storage systems to reduce the amount of data that is written to physical storage devices, in order to improve both bandwidth and price per GB. In SSDs, which use NAND flash devices, compression also helps to improve endurance, which is limited to a fixed number of raw bytes written to the media, and to reduce garbage-collection overheads. Compression is typically implemented in one of three layers: the application, the file system or the firmware of the storage device. Our main findings are that compression embedded within the SSD outperforms the built-in host-side compression engines of a well-known database and file systems. Therefore we focus on intra-SSD compression schemes. We investigate the effects of compression granularity and the arrangement of compressed data in NAND flash pages on data reduction and the lifetime of the SSD. We compare several schemes in this design space, some taken from the literature and some new

An NVM Aware MariaDB Database System and Associated IO Workload on File Systems

MariaDB is a community-developed fork of the MySQL relational database management system and originally designed and implemented in order to use the traditional spinning disk architecture. With Non-Volatile memory (NVM) technology now in the forefront and main stream for server storage (Data centers), MariaDB addresses the need by adding support for NVM devices and introduces NVM Compression method. NVM Compression is a novel hybrid technique that combines application level compression with flash awareness for optimal performance and storage efficiency. Utilizing new interface primitives exported by Flash Translation Layers (FTLs), we leverage the garbage collection available in flash devices to optimize the capacity management required by compression systems. We implement NVM Compression in the popular MariaDB database and use variants of commonly available POSIX file system interfaces to provide the extended FTL capabilities to the user space application. The experimental results show that the hybrid approach of NVM Compression can improve compression performance by 2-7x, deliver compression performance for flash devices that is within 5% of uncompressed performance, improve storage efficiency by 19% over legacy Row-Compression, reduce data writes by up to 4x when combined with other flash aware techniques such as Atomic Writes, and deliver further advantages in power efficiency and CPU utilization. Various micro benchmark measurement and findings on sparse files call for required improvement in file systems for handling of punch hole operations on files

Managing technological innovation and sustaining competitive advantage in the digital imaging industry

Thesis (S.M.M.O.T.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Management of Technology Program, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (leaf 55).The emergence and adoption of a disruptive technology that replaces an existing industry platform not only has enormous implications to incumbent firms, but also creates business opportunities that is enabled by the newly adopted technology. Firms competing in such an evolving and dynamic industry face great management challenges in its product's technological innovation process. Furthermore, defining strategies to sustain its competitive advantage through the market evolution by transitioning to the new platform is a non-trivial management task. This thesis focuses on the digital imaging industry that consists of input/output/storage devices as well as related software and services. This thesis will -- describe the evolution, transition, and competitive/collaborative environment of the consumer photography industry, both analog and digital, by way of value chain analysis, -- identify current trends that is shaping the digital imaging industry and the challenges it faces, -- explore key factors that influence the expansion of digital imaging, focusing on two platform technologies, specifically the image data format and removable memory card format, -- discuss the strategic implications for a new format to be introduced in a fast growing industry and its diffusion strategies, and -- establish a basis to allow firms to address the industry challenges in order to sustain its competitive advantage.by Katsuki Ishii.S.M.M.O.T

Entry Strategies for De-Alio Firms in the Digital Music Player Industry

Master'sMASTER OF ENGINEERIN

Smart vision in system-on-chip applications

In the last decade the ability to design and manufacture integrated circuits with higher transistor densities has led to the integration of complete systems on a single silicon die. These are commonly referred to as System-on-Chip (SoC). As SoCs processes can incorporate multiple technologies it is now feasible to produce single chip camera systems with embedded image processing, known as Imager-on-Chips (IoC). The development of IoCs is complicated due to the mixture of digital and analog components and the high cost of prototyping these designs using silicon processes. There are currently no re-usable prototyping platforms that specifically address the needs of IoC development. This thesis details a new prototyping platform specifically for use in the development of low-cost mass-market IoC applications. FPGA technology was utilised to implement a frame-based processing architecture suitable for supporting a range of real-time imaging and machine vision applications. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the prototyping platform, an example object counting and highlighting application was developed and functionally verified in real-time. A high-level IoC cost model was formulated to calculate the cost of manufacturing prototyped applications as a single IoC. This highlighted the requirement for careful analysis of optical issues, embedded imager array size and the silicon process used to ensure the desired IoC unit cost was achieved. A modified version of the FPGA architecture, which would result in improving the DSP performance, is also proposed

A Study of the color management implementation on the RGB-based digital imaging workflow: digital camera to RGB printers

An RGB (red, green, and blue color information) workflow is used in digital photography today because a lot of the devices digital cameras, scanners, monitors, image recorders (LVT or Light Value Technology), and some types of printers are based on RGB color information. In addition, rapidly growing new media such as the Internet and CD-ROM (Compact Disc-Read-Only Memory) publishing use an RGB -based monitor as the output device. Because color is device-dependent, each device has a different method of representing color information. Each has a different range of color they can reproduce. Most of the time, the range of color, color gamut, that devices can produce is smaller than that of the original capturing device. As a result, a color image reproduction does not match accurately with its original. Therefore, in typical color image reproduction, the task of matching a color image reproduction with its original is a significant problem that operators must overcome to achieve good quality color image reproduction. Generally, there are two approaches to conquer these problems. The first method is trial-and-error in the legacy-based system. This method is effective in a pair-wise working environment and highly depended on a skill operator. The second method is the ICC-based (ICC or International Color Consortium) color management system (CMS) which is more practical in the multiple devices working environment. Using the right method leads to the higher efficiency of a digital photography produc tion. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis project is to verify that ICC-based CMS with an RGB workflow has higher efficiency (better utilized of resource and capacity) than a legacy-based traditional color reproduction workflow. In this study, the RGB workflows from digital cameras to RGB digital printers were used because of the increasing num ber of digital camera users and the advantages of using an RGB workflow in digital pho tography. There were two experimental image reproduction workflows the legacy-based system and the ICC-based color management system. Both of them used the same raw RGB images that were captured from digital cameras as their input files. The color images were modified with two different color matching methods according to each workflow. Then, they were printed out to two RGB digital printers. Twenty observers were asked to evaluate the picture quality as well as the reproduction quality. The results demonstrated that the two workflows had the ability to produce an accept able picture quality reproduction. For reproduction quality aspect, the reproductions of the ICC-based CMS workflow had higher reproduction quality than the legacy-based workflow. In addition, when the time usage of the workflow was taken into account, it showed that the ICC-based CMS had higher efficiency than the legacy-based system. However, many times, image production jobs do not start with optimum quality raw images as in this study; for example, they are under/over exposure or have some defects. These images need some retouching work or fine adjustment to improve their quality. In these cases, the ICC-based CMS with skilled operators can be implemented to these types of production in order to achieve the high efficiency workflow

Electronic Books: An Overview of the First Two Generations.

The electronic text reading device, or e-book, is an idea that has reached the implementation stage. Technology has only recently made possible the production of a device to challenge the printed book’s dominance as the media for information transmission. These microprocessor-based devices are attempts to exceed the limitations of printed texts while retaining their strengths. Two generations of these devices, and the companies that created them, have reached the marketplace. This thesis provides a short history of electronic text readers and gives an overview of the first and second generations. The issues that will affect the adoption of the e-book as the dominant media for the transmission of texts are discussed. The primary objections to the e-book’s replacement of the book are durability, ease of use and clarity. With these concerns addressed by improvement of the underlying technology, the e-book will replace the majority of the printed books in the marketplace

Migración de la plataforma a bordo del robot asistencial ASIBOT

El grupo Robotics-lab de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, desarrolló en 2004 un primer prototipo del robot asistencial ASIBOT, cuyo nombre en el contexto del proyecto europeo fue MATS (flexible Mechatronic Assistive Technology System to support persons with special needs in all their living and working environments), cuya finalidad es la ayuda y asistencia a personas discapacitadas y de la tercera edad. Este proyecto fin de carrera surge al darse la necesidad de actualizar el hardware interno a bordo del robot, solventando así problemas encontrados en las fases de pruebas con usuarios reales, y superando las limitaciones del anterior sistema de comunicaciones interno. En este contexto se ha desarrollado dicho proyecto, cuyo objetivo era la migración de la aplicación original a bordo de ASIBOT a un sistema Linux embebido con capacidades de tiempo real en una tarjeta phyCORE PXA270 siendo capaz de dar respuesta a una comunicación interna entre distintos dispositivos basada en el bus CAN y una comunicación externa mediante el protocolo Wi-Fi 802.11b. Para ello, ha sido necesario sustituir el sistema operativo anterior, utilizando diferentes drivers específicos y diferentes herramientas para su programación. Esto ha implicado una completa migración del código fuente original, mediante múltiples recompilaciones y adaptaciones de los módulos del kernel hasta conseguir el correcto funcionamiento del sistema y los dispositivos. ____________________________________________________The RoboticsLab research group, part of University Carlos III de Madrid, developed a first prototype of the assistive robot ASIBOT in 2004. Its name in European project context was MATS (flexible Mechatronic Assistive Technology System to support persons with special needs in all their living and working environments). Its objective is helping and assisting impaired and elder people. This career-end project is derived from the need of updating the robot’s internal hardware. This way, problems found in test phases with real patients and internal communication limitations of the predecessor system were reduced. This is the context in which the project has been developed. Objectives were integration with a Linux system with real time capacities, on board phyCORE PXA270, capable of managing internal communications between modules, such as motor controllers, sensors, etc., based on CAN-bus and external communications using the 802.11b wireless protocol, making the complete migration to the ASIBOT’s application. For this, the previous operating system had to be replaced, specific hardware drivers had to be substituted, migration to different APIs had to be performed. This is, tasks implied a complete migration of the original source code at the end of the Project, along with the multiple adaptations of modules and kernel recompilation necessary for the correct functioning of the system and their devices.Ingeniería Industria