Towards local control for image-based texture synthesis

New advances in image based texture synthesis techniques allow the generation of arbitrarily sized textures based on a small sample. The generated textures are perceived as very similar to the given sample. One main drawback of these techniques, however, is that the synthesized result cannot be locally controlled, that is, we are able to synthesize a larger version of the sample but without much variation. We present in this paper a technique which improves on current fast texture synthesis techniques by allowing local control over the result. By local control we mean a final texture that is still perceived as a whole but presents variations in size of the basic elements. Our solution generates the final texture from a small collection of the same sample at different resolutions, adequately interpolated. We illustrate our results with some examples, including natural textures such as animal coat patterns, which exhibit local variations that can be adequately captured by our algorithm.