NEWS: This New Patent Could Be a Game-Changer for Your Disney World Photos

One of our favorite things to do after a Disney World trip is to look through all our photos, which gives us a chance to relive our Disney vacation. Some of the best photos, though, are those taken by Disney PhotoPass photographers. Now getting your PhotoPass photo downloads isn’t necessarily cheap (although it is included with Lightning Lane Multi Pass in Disneyland), but those photos are almost always nearly perfect.

What if you could remove strangers from your PhotoPass photos?

But you know what would make those photos even better? Well, it would be nice if strangers weren’t running around in the background of that almost perfect shot of you and your family in front of the castle. Well, what if we told you Disney was working on a way of fixing that problem?

Disney just filed a new patent that could do just that: automatically remove strangers from the background of your PhotoPass photos. This would happen on the computer end of things, similar to how you can remove people from photos on many smartphones. Then that shot of you and your family in front of the castle would be perfect, right?

PhotoPass Studio

This technology would work like this: the image would be captured by a PhotoPass photographer. That photo goes into Disney’s photo system with both you and your family and strangers in the background. The system then breaks the photo down into certain segments, each representing an object or person. Then it determines depth, basically figuring out how far each segment is from the camera.

©U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

Each segment gets a sort of score based on its depth. The system then determines where the focal point of the photo is (you and your family) and determines what’s part of that group. Everything outside of that (strangers in the background) is removed or replaced. The program is also able to determine people in strollers and wheelchairs, or even when those being photographed are posing behind others.

©U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

The obvious use for this would be with PhotoPass photos, and with the amount of photos taken each day by photographers, manually removing strangers in the background just isn’t practical. However, if it can be done automatically with this new program, the process becomes more seamless and efficient without any additional manual work required.

Photo Pass Cast Member!

Of course, filing a patent isn’t the same as putting something to use, but it’s interesting to discover that this is a problem that Disney is aware of and is trying to actively solve. We’ll have to see if this one makes it to the parks. We’ll keep an eye out for updates, so stay tuned to DFB for more.

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