Autophotographer

A program for turning a video feed into a user-defined number of images that fits the 'rule-of-thirds' rule of thumb.
Made with Python 3 & OpenCV.

Created as a third year major project for Aberystwyth University by Ewan Selkirk.

Requirements

• Python 3.5+ (Developed with 3.8/3.10 but tested on 3.5-3.10)
• pip 3
• Numpy
• OpenCV

Installing & Running

1. Clone the repo with git clone https://github.com/Ewan-Selkirk/Autophotographer.git or download the repo as a zip
2. Install the requirements with pip install -r requirements.txt
3. Run the program with python autophotographer.py -i [video file/folder path] -c [brightness, sharpness, colour/color]

Algorithms

Brightness

The brightness algorithm attempts to find frames that match the rule-of-thirds by the brightness of the pixels inside the 9 quadrants of an image.

Sharpness

The sharpness algorithm attempts to find frames that match the rule-of-thirds by the number of edge pixels after a Canny edge detection operation is run on each quadrant of an image.

Color/Colour

The color/colour algorithm attempts to find frames that match the rule-of-thirds by using the 3 separate colour channels of each of the 9 quadrants of an image.

Options

Required

Short-code	Long-code	Description	Choices
-i	--pathIn	The file or directory of files to run the program on	N/A
-c	--config	A list of algorithms to run on the video (multiple accepted)	brightness, sharpness, colour/color

Optional

Short-code	Long-code	Description
-o	--pathOut	Set the folder to output the created images to. Defaults to an 'Output' folder in the current working directory.
-q	--quantity	Sets the number of images to create.
-n	--name	Sets the file name of every file created by the program. Allows for the use of tokens. Defaults to the date and time the operation was run at, followed by the file name.
-h	--help	Displays this help field.
-v	--verbose	Displays additional information while the program runs.

Name Tokens

The name argument allows for the use of tokens to make cataloging images easier.
Below are the list of tokens that are currently supported:

Token	Example	Description
%dt	04-22-10_15-04-22	The current date and time
%d	04-22-10	Only the current date
%t	15-04-22	Only the current time
%f	tram	The current file name (minus file extension)
%o	brightness-sharpness	The list of algorithms being ran on the files
%os	b-s	Shortened list of algorithms being ran on the files
%%	%	An escaped percentage symbol

Developing

Requirements

• Git
• Git LFS
• Python 3.5+
• pip 3
  • virtualenv (if you don't want packages installed globally)
  • opencv-contrib-python >= 4.5.5.60 or opencv-python >= 4.5.5.60
  • numpy >= 1.22
  • tox >= 3.25.0

Running Tox Tests

With PyCharm

Right-click the tox.ini file and select 'Run'. PyCharm will generate the run configuration based on the ini file.

Manually

If using a virtual environment, source into the environment (or activate if on Windows) and simply run 'tox' from the main directory.

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