Adobe Research Proposes HDMatt, A Deep Learning-Based Image Matting Approach

Image matting is an essential technique to estimate the foreground objects in images and videos for editing and composition. The conventional deep learning approach takes the input image and associated trimap to get the alpha matte using convolution neural networks. But since the real-world input images for matting are mostly of very high resolution, such approaches efficiency suffers in real-world matting applications due to hardware limitations. To address the issue mentioned above, HD-Matt, the first deep learning-based image matting approach for high-resolution image inputs, is proposed by a group of researchers from UIUC (University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign), Adobe Research, and the University of Oregon. HD-Matt works on the'divide-and-conquer' principle.