Here's a free inspirational ebook with pictures of living rooms, bedrooms, kitchens and home office spaces visualized and designed by professionals. You can download it and share it as much as you like.

Get a School Makeover

Does your school need a makeover?

We can't send it to Paris or Hollywood, but we can help you make it look better without leaving home.
A fresh coat of paint can make students and teachers happier. When they feel better, they learn better. True, it won't solve a leaky roof or a busted boiler, but it will make your school a place you can be proud of. Much better than a school that looks like this or this.
Colorjive will let you give your school a fresh coat of paint without picking up a brush. We usually offer licenses for up to $75 a year. However, after we saw these pictures, we decided we wanted to do something about it:
So, we're offering licenses free to any school or college that wants to transform themselves with a fresh coat of paint. And, if you like, I'll help you pick out the colors. So, if your school needs a makeover, contact us at info at colorjive.com to help you on your way.

Regards,
Igor Asselbergs ceo

P.S. Don't hesitate to take the lead. It's up to you!

Why Can't My Computer Recognize a Red Wall?

People often ask why the bucket still makes so many mistakes. Why won't we make software that is able to distinguish a wall or a door from the rest of the picture. Why not indeed?

The short answer: Because we have no clue how the human eye sees a wall or a door.

Surprised?
There's a lot we know about human perception. However, there's a lot more that we don't know about it. Perception is still largely unchartered scientific territory.

Let me explain this in more detail with an example. Here's a picture of a room with white and red walls. Common sense says it should be easy to distinguish a red wall from a white wall. After all, the walls are clearly visable in the picture.
To the computer, however, they are no more than a collection of colored pixels.
If so, why not take out the white pixels and the red pixels seperately?
Because the white wall isn't white and the red wall isn't red. And to complicate matters even more, there's a lot of red and white to be found outside the white and red walls. Here's a random collection of pixels from the white wall: As you can see, there are a lot of colors in the white wall, some of them even white.
But surely the red wall must be easier? After all, this is a bold color, which can clearly be distinghuished from the rest. Well, here are some of the pixels in the red wall: Do you see the bold red from the paint can that was applied onto that wall?
Me neither.
Interesting, isn't it? The pixels of the red wall don't even contain the shade of red it was painted with. That's because the color of the pixels result from the reflection of the light on the painted surface. Not only the paint determines the color, the light does so too. What we think of as red, is in fact not red at all. How on earth we are then able to recognize a red wall as a red wall is an enigma which still baffles the scientists. The truth is that scientists are now only investigating IF computers will ever be able to recognize a red wall. The HOW is probably something for our grandchildren to worry about. So don't expect a perfect bucket tool any time soon.

That said, there are ways to make things a bit easier for the computer as well as the user. The bucket is one of them.
Then how does the bucket work?
Contrary to popular belief (and contrary to Photoshop, for that matter) it does not search for similarly colored pixels. Instead it uses an advanced algorithm, involving statistics, to make a calculated guess as to which pixels belong to the red wall. It is so advanced that if you use the bucket on a textured surface such as a brick wall, you will find that it will interpret the brick as well as the mortar as one and the same surface. It can pull that trick utilizing some very cool technology that we developed in cooperation with the University of Amsterdam.
We have some more tricks up our sleeves. But we haven't come round yet to implementing it in Colorjive because it involves quite complicated math which would draw too much computing power off the computer.

Dinosaur Colors

Until last week, paleontologists could offer no clear-cut evidence for the color of dinosaurs. Then researchers provided evidence that a dinosaur called Sinosauropteryx had a white-and-ginger striped tail. And now a team of paleontologists has published a full-body portrait of another dinosaur, in striking plumage.
Read about it in Wired Science.
If you like you can color your own dinosaurs on Colorjive.

Wonderland of Art and Color

Some 50 international artists each transformed a room in the Hotel Beethoven in the German city of Bonn. The hotel is a relic from the 1960-ties which is about to be demolished. But before the hotel goes down, the artists have taken the chance to turn it into a wonderland of art and color. The exhibition will last till the end of februari, when the building will be torn down.
Here's the website. Scroll down for more images.

Projections on Buildings

These days it is possible to color buildings in a different way than only paint or material. Colors can be projected onto a building. This is not limited to still images. You can project anything you like onto a building. And that's exactly what's being done by the Dutch company NuFormer. Check out this spectacular video.

Projection on Buildings from NuFormer Digital Media on Vimeo.

First Upgrade of the Year

As you may have noticed, we had our first upgrade this year. We added a button on our homepage which links to the 'Paint Your Room in One Minute' video on Youtube. We also made the Pro license available for everyone. Finally we placed some of the kind endorsements we received at the bottom of the home page.
I hope you like it. We're already planning the next upgrade.