Discuss “Like Photoshop, but easier”

People always bring back the same couple of things from family vacations: tan lines, empty wallets, made-in-China souvenirs, and — of course — photographs. And no family album could be complete without the requisite duds: Mom’s poorly timed shot of Lake Winnipesaukee, obscured by that boat that sailed into the picture; Dad’s artsy still of Abbey Road at sunrise, looking eerily vacant instead of serene. Hoping to remedy such photo faux pas, researchers at Carnegie Mellon developed two new photo editing techniques that could help the next family album earn its place on the coffee table.

Ditching the sailboat

James Hays, a Ph.D. candidate in SCS’s Graphics Lab, created a system called Scene Completion; he designed the technique around...