Techniques are disclosed for retargeting images. The techniques include receiving one or more input images, computing a two-dimensional saliency map based on the input images in order to determine one or more visually important features associated with the input images, projecting the saliency map horizontally and vertically to create at least one of a horizontal and vertical saliency profile, and scaling at least one of the horizontal and vertical saliency profiles. The techniques further include creating an output image based on the scaled saliency profiles. Low saliency areas are scaled non-uniformly while high saliency areas are scaled uniformly. Temporal stability is achieved by filtering the horizontal resampling pattern and the vertical resampling pattern over time. Image retargeting is achieved with greater efficiency and lower compute power, resulting in a retargeting architecture that may be implemented in a circuit suitable for mobile applications such as mobile phones and tablet computers.