Local face sketch synthesis learning

Facial sketch synthesis (FSS) is crucial in sketch-based face recognition. This paper proposes an automatic FSS algorithm with local strategy based on embedded hidden Markov model (E-HMM) and selective ensemble (SE). By using E-HMM to model the nonlinear relationship between a photo–sketch patch pair, a series of pseudo-sketch patches, generated based on several learned models for a given photo patch, are integrated with SE strategy to synthesize a finer face pseudo-sketch patch. Finally, the intact pseudo-sketch can be generated by combining all synthesized patches. Experimental results illustrate that the proposed FSS algorithm works well.