Images of the same scene from multiple cameras may be use to generate a stereo disparity map. At least a portion of the stereo disparity map may be compared to a kernel image to detect and/or determine the location of an object in the disparity map. The kernel image is an array of pixel values which represent the stereo disparity of an object to be located, more particularly, the kernel image indicates the 3-dimensional surface shape of the object to be located from a point of view. The disparity map containing the located object may be process to manipulate the display of the stereo-based image and/or an input image. For example, the display of the image may be cropped and/or zoomed, areas of the image that are not the located object may be modified, an object such as an emoticon or smart-emoticon may be virtually inserted into the three dimensions of the image and may interact with the object, the location of the object in the image may localize further searches, presence of the located object in the image may indicate selected storing of the image and/or image indexing, and/or the located object in the image may be used as a non-standard input device to a computing system.
