Low level features for image appeal measurement

Abstract

Image appeal may be defined as the interest that a photograph generates when viewed by human observers, incorporating subjective factors on top of the traditional objective quality measures. User studies were conducted in order to identify the right features to use in an image appeal measure; these studies also revealed that a photograph may be appealing even if only a region/area of the photograph is actually appealing. Due to the importance of faces regarding image appeal, a detailed study of a set of face features is also presented, including face size, color and smile detection. Extensive experimentation helped identify a good set of low level features, which are described in depth. These features were optimized using extensive ground truth generated from sets of consumer photos covering all possible appeal levels, by observers with a range of expertise in photography.