Perceptual organization in an interactive sketch editing application

The paper shows how techniques from computational vision can be deployed to support interactive sketch editing. While conventional computer supported drawing tools give users access to visible marks or image objects at a single level of abstraction, a human user´s visual system rapidly constructs complex groupings and associations among image elements according to his or her immediate purposes. We have been exploring perceptually supported sketch editors in which computer vision algorithms run continuously, behind the scenes, to afford users efficient access to emergent visual objects in a drawing. We employ a flexible image interpretation architecture based on token grouping in a multiscale blackboard data structure. This organization supports multiple perceptual interpretations of line drawing data, domain specific knowledge bases for interpreting visual structures, and natural gesture based selection of visual objects