Returning from SIGGRAPH, I'm wondering what to do next. I'm interested in doing a Poisson matting implementation because it seems like such utter magic. Consider, for instance, Zebediah's hair. It's incredibly fine and blond and wispy. What if I wanted to put a background of flying toasters behind him, instead of the Cyndi's House of Pancakes furniture? Creating the mask for his hair would be incredibly difficult, especially that flyaway bit up on top. Heck, even just getting a mask for all the little wrinkles in his overalls would be a labor of love. (I'd have to really want to put flying toasters behind him.

Poisson matting can do the masking properly, algorithmically, magically. We could put flying toasters behind Zeb, or art from In the Night Kitchen, that classic of somnambulant.baking. See? It's magic.

Two other papers, GrabCut and Lazy Snapping, both by Microsoft Research, address the same problem, I think. (Sorry, no links yet) Now, how about I write a plugin to something that creates the mats via Poisson matting, GrabCutting, and Lazy Snapping? That would be hot. I love doing two-dimensional image processing. This could be programming that I enjoy, programming that gets me out of bed in the morning, or at least keeps me up late at night. I just hope I can handle the math.