Overview

For this project, we had to reproduce the effects of lightfield cameras, which take multiple images and combine them. Since the combined image originates from various images that are taken from slightly different perspectives, we can alter the area of focus and the aperture.

Part 1: Depth Refocusing

To alter the depth of focus in an image, we compute the average of various shifted images. To do this, we take each image calculate its shift relative to the center, at position (8,8). By finding the shift and then scaling it by a constant factor, we achieve the effect of adjusting the focus plane. This gif demonstrates the shift of the focus with scalar values from [1, 7]

Part 2: Aperture Adjustment

To adjust the aperture, we take a similar approach of averaging images, however this time we average them in a varying distance from the center. Smaller radii produce smaller apertures and larger radii yielded larger apertures, which can be seen in the gif where the radii range from 0 to 9.

Part 3: Summary

This was an interesting project because I had never known about lightfields beforehand but I always enjoyed lightfield images that I had seen. Also the simplicity with which these cool effects were implemented was also really fun as I was able to enjoy what the effects were actually doing rather than spending a lot of time figuring out the implementation. I also feel as though I understand more specifically how aperture and depth focusing can influence the perception of an image, for example using both aperture adjustments and depth refocusing to induce the bokeh effect, one of my favorite effects on an image.