Seam Carving: Using Dynamic Programming to implement Context-Aware Image Resizing in Python

The following problem appeared as an assignment in the Algorithm Course (COS 226) at Princeton University taught by Prof. Sedgewick. The following description of the problem is taken from the assignment itself. The first step is to calculate the energy of a pixel, which is a measure of its importance--the higher the energy, the less likely that the pixel will be included as part of a seam (as you will see in the next step). In this assignment, we shall use the dual-gradient energy function, which is described below. The next step is to find a vertical seam of minimum total energy.