Requirements
The customer wanted the Elinext team to develop an application that will help users to take a picture of his or her skin, publish it online via Social Networks and have a reference guide on tan processes at hand. The mobile application had to read skin code, be capable to send to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace pictures of skin, and comments to pictures.
Challenge
The main challenge for our developers was to implement skin code recognition. They faced the following difficulties:
- How to recognize where the skin is on the picture
- How to implement tan id range recognition especially for individuals with very dark skin
- How to optimize math algorithm so that it would be useful and had high performance
Solution
To solve the first task our developers had to study lots of pages of information before actually starting to develop the code. Developers investigated libraries that contain a lot of mathematical algorithms; however, they decided that it will be hard for mobile devices to use such functions. They read a lot of materials about skin detection and chose one of the technologies Explicit Image Detection using YCbCr Space Color Model as Skin Detection by Jorge Alberto Marcial Basilio, Gualberto Aguilar Torres, Gabriel Sanchez Perez, L. Karina Toscano Medina , Hector M. Perez Meana from Seccion de Estudios de Posgrados e Investigacion Escuela Superior de Ingenieria Mecanica y Electrica Unidad Culhuacan Santa Ana and applied and optimized it for mobile phones.
Results
The development project outcome is an application for iPhone and iPad, Android and Android tablets, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7 mobile platforms, available for download at app stores. The application has the following functionality:
Main screen:
- Make a picture
- Tan ID detection
- Sharing via Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace
Does & Don'ts: Information about how to behave yourself exposed to the sun
Links to Tanning Info: Up-to-date information from different websites
52 Weeks Specials: A built-in calendar which shows each week’s special
Lotions: Information about lotions for your needs
Schedule & Notes: Calendar & notes about your tan salons
