# Machines and Artists



## Overread (Jun 6, 2009)

Well one group of programmers are out to make a machine to determin our artistic tastes and thus predict if an image (a photo) is any good or not

ACQUINE: Aesthetic Quality Inference Engine - Instant Impersonal Assessment of Photos







54.3 / 100





26.6 / 100





36.5 / 100





56.6 / 100





56.1 / 100

Clearly the machine still has some faults 
Plus I think it has a clear bias (if you study the highscoring images on its site) towards high contrast and high saturation.

Try it for yourself!


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## Lenny (Jun 7, 2009)

73.5 / 100





58.3 / 100





29.2 / 100





12.3 / 100

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If it weren't for my cat and avatar scoring so lowly, I would have had to disagree with you on it having faults, OR.


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## Saeltari (Jun 7, 2009)

It looks like they might need to reconfigure, as looking at their high scoring pictures made me decide not to try the site. 

From the quick glance it looks like pictures with people in them do best, but those don't do much for me I prefer landscapes.


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## Ursa major (Jun 7, 2009)

Even if the "machine" somehow worked, which it does not seem to do, the whole idea is totally bogus.

The "machine" is not calling on some great aesthetic sense - a sense which it cannot possess - but is simply repeating mechanically the views of those who program it and populate its decision tables.


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## Overread (Jun 7, 2009)

True Ursa, but its an interesting question. Taking out the exceptions of emotional contact to the conetent of the photo (a photo of your pet is a great shot not matter how out of focus ).
So sticking with general photos and appreciation of them there are already compositional rules that are followed/used - rule of thirds/the golden something and having eye contact along with eyes in focus (almost the golden rule for wildlife). So even with those could there be more to the game?

At the moment high contast and high saturation seem to be desirable and it a feature of a lot of modern works with digital cameras, though its not the be all and end all


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## Saeltari (Jun 7, 2009)

I think that the machine would be a hit if it was only machines viewing the pictures but people bring their experiences and emotional background to each image they view and that adds to the criteria of whether a picture is good to them or not. To be honest I don't know much about photography, but my brother is one. A professional, anybody who knows what they are doing, consistently has a better portfolio in my eyes but each picture in that portfolio will have a different value to me based upon my likes, dislikes, experiences and emotional background. I don't see how a machine, at this point, can account for that. Things can be technically perfect but still dead. 

I do think it is a neat idea and kind of fun to play with but I personally and most of the people I know wouldn't actually use a machine for rankings like that. In an area where it is only measurable skill that matters I think a ranking machine is a great idea but outside of that, not so much so, at least not yet.


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## Ursa major (Jun 7, 2009)

By trying to codify something and also provide a mechanism to measure things against that codification, there is a danger that should it be seen to have any validiy, some people will become hell bent on producing an image that "achieves" a perfect score down to x number of decimal places.

And as Saeltari says, there is more to a picture than meeting more or less arbitrary rules of aesthetics. Contect place a big part, as well as the input of the (sentient) viewer.



(And by the way: how can a picture of a cat get such a low score?)


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## Deathpool (Jun 16, 2009)

Ursa major said:


> Even if the "machine" somehow worked, which it does not seem to do, the whole idea is totally bogus.
> 
> The "machine" is not calling on some great aesthetic sense - a sense which it cannot possess - but is simply repeating mechanically the views of those who program it and populate its decision tables.


 
Exactly! A machine isn't intelligent like a human and will only do what the instructions tell it to do. Of course there's a limited number of instructions so the machine has limitations.


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## Overread (Jun 16, 2009)

The thing is though there are rules to art already - rule of 3rds and some others which are based primarily on greek maths (mostly). So there are rules that the machine can come to understand the relate to an image. The key part I think is getting a machine to understand what its looking at as an image not just a series of coloured dots - once its knows its looking at a cat in a field it can start to apply the composition rules and such.

Certainly its limited and a blurry shot of your pet cat is still going to be a good shot because its your blurry shot of your cat! but for compeititons and the like where the viewer has no emotional link to the image it would be interesting to see if the machin could pick the winners out


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## Wybren (Jun 17, 2009)

so I put in a few to give it a whurl






rated 92.1





rated 54.3





rated 72.2





got 20.9


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## Deathpool (Jun 17, 2009)

I don't see how rules alone can influence how good a picture is. I believe emotions play at least some of a part. Also the programmers could introduce biasedness.


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