Create Cartoon Background in Webcam Stream using OpenCV

What will we cover in this tutorial?

How to create this effect.

The idea behind the code

The idea behind the above effect is simple. We will use a background subtractor, which will get the background of an image and make a mask of the foreground.

The it simple follows this structure.

1. Capture a frame from the webcam.
2. Get the foreground mask fg_mask.
3. To get greater effect dilate the fg_mask.
4. From the original frame, create a cartoon frame.
5. Use the zero entries of fg_mask as index to copy the cartoon frame into frame. That is, it overwrites all pixel corresponding to a zero (black) value in fg_mask to the values of the cartoon in the original frame. That results in that we only get cartoon effect in the background and not on the objects.
6. Show the frame with background cartoon effect.

The code you need to create the above effect

This is all done by using OpenCV. If you need help to install OpenCV I suggest you read this tutorial. Otherwise the code follows the above steps.

import cv2
backSub = cv2.createBackgroundSubtractorKNN(history=200)
cap = cv2.VideoCapture(0)
while True:
    _, frame = cap.read()
    fg_mask = backSub.apply(frame)
    fg_mask = cv2.dilate(fg_mask, None, iterations=2)
    _, cartoon = cv2.pencilSketch(frame, sigma_s=50, sigma_r=0.3, shade_factor=0.02)
    idx = (fg_mask < 1)
    frame[idx] = cartoon[idx]
    cv2.imshow('Frame', frame)
    cv2.imshow('FG Mask', fg_mask)
    keyboard = cv2.waitKey(1)
    if keyboard == ord('q'):
        break

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