Image manipulation method and apparatus

Abstract

A computer-implemented image manipulation apparatus and method () configured to receiving an input image () and a desired style. The method can obtain a representation () of the input image selected from a plurality of stored representations of a plurality of images, wherein each said representation comprises data describing a set of image features. The method can modify image features in the obtained representation to correspond to the input image and/or the desired style to produce a modified representation (), and render a reference image () based on the modified representation. A manipulated image is generated by performing a style transfer operation () on the input image using the rendered reference image. Embodiments may access a data store to find a group of stored images based on similarity between image content descriptors of groups of stored images and those of an input image to retrieve a stored reference image.