Creating Images for Displaying or Printing on Low-Contrast Background

Abstract

Techniques for automatically adding special effects to an image to be overlaid on a low-contrast background are presented. A stroke or an intervening layer of a color contrasting with the background color is automatically added to provide a contrasting color around the edges of visible image content in an image container of an electronic document. The technique may be applied to entire libraries of images to generate variant images that are visually perceptible when displayed or printed on low-contrast background colors.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A computer-implemented method for adding a contrasting effect around image content in an image container of an electronic document, the image container characterized by a height dimension and a width dimension, the image container comprising one or more visible content layers and a background layer, the background layer characterized by a background color and the one or more visible content layers comprising image content defined by visible content edges, the method comprising:
 determining the visible content edges of the image content;   automatically inserting, by one or more processors, an intervening layer between the one or more visible content layers and the background layer in the image container,   generating, by one or more processors, a visible object on the intervening layer, the object characterized by an object color which contrasts with the background color, and the object positioned on the intervening layer such that at least a first portion of the object remains visible and at least a second portion of the object is covered by the visible image content on at least one of the visible content layers.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the first portion of the object is visible outside the perimeter of the visible content edges. 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the object comprises the entirety of the intervening layer characterized by an intervening layer color which contrasts with the background color. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 3 , further comprising:
 shrinking the visible image content contained within the image container while maintaining an original size of the image container and intervening layer.   
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 4 , wherein the step of shrinking the visible image content comprises maintaining the aspect ratio of the visible image content. 
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein a variant image is generated having the intervening layer added to the visible image content of the original image. 
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 6 , wherein the size of the variant image corresponds to the size of the visible image content. 
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 6 , wherein the variant image is combined with an image of a product to produce an image of a customized product incorporating the variant image. 
     
     
         9 . The method of  claim 7 , further comprising displaying the customized product image. 
     
     
         10 . The method of  claim 6 , further comprising printing the variant image to produce a product incorporating the variant image. 
     
     
         11 . A computer readable storage medium tangibly embodying program instructions which, when executed by a computer, implements the method of  claim 1 . 
     
     
         12 . A system configured to implement the method of  claim 1 . 
     
     
         13 . An image content management software including an image variant generator, said image variant generator implementing the method of  claim 1 .