Reaction-diffusion Woodcuts

Woodcuts are a traditional form of engraving, where paint is rolled over the surface of a carved wood block which will be used as a printing surface over a sheet of paper, so only the non-carved parts will be printed in the paper. In this paper, we present an approach for computer simulated woodcuts using reaction-diffusion as the underlying mechanism. First, we preprocess the segmented input image to generate a parameter map, containing values for each pixel of the image. This parameter map will be used as an input to control the reaction-diffusion processing, allowing different areas of the image to have distinct appearances, such as spots or stripes with varied size or direction, or areas with plain black or white color. Reaction-diffusion is then performed resulting in the raw appearance of the final image. After reaction-diffusion, we apply a thresholding filter to generate the final woodcut black and white appearance. Our results show that the final images look qualitatively similar to some styles of woodcuts, and add yet another possibility of computer generated artistic expression.