Comments on: [News] An Algorithm That Tells Which Pics Sucks and Which Rock?

By: Mike M

Mike M — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 12:56:00 +0000

As opposed to the anthropomorphic robots who currently decide what looks awesome or not? I’m in.

By: Tevan Shii Lockhart

Tevan Shii Lockhart — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 12:22:00 +0000

The human eye likes “contrast” so I bet the program looks for luminance contrast and color contrast to judge photos.

By: Peter Dowell

Peter Dowell — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 19:18:00 +0000

If you read “how” the algorithm defines “good” images, it essentially consists of the “rules” of photography; rule of thirds, good saturate, tone range, etc. What this doesn’t account for is any kind of emotional reaction provoked by a photograph, or anything that breaks those “rules”. Not that I’d expect a computer to easily define, or find such things!
Would be interesting to pitch this thing against flickr’s “interestingness algorithm”, which presumably harvests user-generated data rather than anything like this.

By: Gareth Bogdanoff

Gareth Bogdanoff — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 19:11:00 +0000

It relies heavily on rules, like my old nemesis the Rule of Thirds.

“The Xerox algorithm understands good beach images as simple photos with
intense colours or dramatic black and white clouds. The algorithm also
detects images with silky waves captured with long camera exposure.”

Also, since you can’t click on any of the images, and they have all been cropped into square format, you just have to take their word for it that these images are good or bad. In my opinion, many good images break the rules. I’m guessing that the rule breakers would end up in the “bad” column. I’m not surprised that someone is trying this, and I’m only slightly appalled. Any art buyer who can’t tell for him/herself what makes an image good or bad is not an art buyer who I would ever want to work with.

By: Jens Marklund

Jens Marklund — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 18:15:00 +0000

Sooo… if you shoot with a black backdrop, and/or make it BW – it’s a good photo?

By: Yui Sotozaki

Yui Sotozaki — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 18:13:00 +0000

I wonder if this is similar to how cameras “recognize” scenes. It’s picking up some pictures into categories they don’t belong to, but processing them as such. It’s like the algorithm is missing perspective clue in its way to recognize a scene. Very interesting nonetheless!