If you can sketch it - they can 'shop' it

This is an incredible advance in online image manipulation. The premise is simple enough - draw a (labelled) sketch describing what kind of photographic elements you want in a picture and (most importantly) where you want them in the picture. Let the software find the elements in different photos (online) and place those elements as described in your sketch.

PhotoSketch is an Internet Image Montage project from five Chinese Computer Science and Technology students at Tsinghua University and the National University of Singapore. It works like this:

• Draw the outlines of the figures you want in your picture – anything from seagulls to a Mercedes, whatever tickles your fancy.
• Add labels for each of the items, as well as for the background.
• PhotoSketch will then find real-life images to match your doodles and put them together in a Photoshopped image that will seem incredible.

Photosketch has such great image recognition technology that it can determine which dog fits best in your canine doodle. Check out the demo video.

The actual site is offline at time of posting (probably from the high amount of interest from all of the press it got), but keep watching - it is a real site.