Image-based control of skin melanin texture.

We introduce a useful tool for controlling the skin melanin texture of facial photographs. Controlling the skin melanin texture is an important task in the reproduction of posters, TV commercials, movies, and so on. We used component maps of melanin, which were obtained by a previous method [J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 16, 2169 (1999)] as the first processing step. We propose to control the melanin texture continuously and physiologically, based on the analysis of 123 skin textures in our database. The physiological validity for the change of the melanin texture is confirmed by comparing the synthesized image with an ultraviolet image, which can be used to predict the change of melanin texture due to aging. The control processes are implemented on programmable graphics hardware, and real-time processing is achieved for a facial videostream.