When I have time later, I might feed it some images from the Magnum (the agency) corpus and see what feedback I get.
Once upon a time, in certain newbie photo critique forums, pranksters would upload a renowned photographers image for critique... Hilarious feedback from new photographers showing off their critiquing prowess.
I got it to give me a 9.7/10 but I seriously doubt I'm a better photographer than Ansel Adams I'm betting it has an unintentional bias against black and white photography.
I got it to give me a 9.7/10 but I seriously doubt I'm a better photographer than Ansel Adams I'm betting it has an unintentional bias against black and white photography.
Truly impressive. I've been putting in pictures of my daughter from my phone and I think Keegan really shines at evaluating the pictures I take of my life. Sorta like a writing coach for a diary.
The difficulty will be understanding context. Was blurr intended for effect? Same with a fuzzy picture, or a dark one, or one with no apparent subject, or was it informational only, etc.
Some photography is presented as contemporary art, some isn't. "Fine art photography" is usually not credible contemporary art. It's often black and white, formalistic, maybe a female nude... I can imagine an AI that only understands formal qualities becoming pretty good at rating it.
What you might call conceptual photography, on the other hand, is "AI-complete". It's as hard as literature to appreciate, you definitely need a full human-equivalent AI.
Roland Barthes' ideas of the studium and the punctum start to open up the intellectual depth of that kind of photo.
This kind of project is possibly credible as a rater of formal quality against some ideal norm, maybe stretching to understanding composition in a crude sense. But everyone knows that it's the unexpected but visually compelling feature that makes an image good. (Or alternatively the significance of its content.) Standard strategies like the "rule of thirds" can only produce formulaic images.
But I get it. It's a great tool for beginners to see their rookie faults and address the basics [1]before they can foray into more intermediate photography. And then break the basics [2] in order to know why breaking the rules work and sometimes don't.
Semi-related (to the optics/mechanics) is this tool[3]
I'm impressed with the ability to recognize different scenes and subject matters. There are achievements that include photographing waterfalls and beaches! How cool is this?
Side note: Is this bot on Facebook Messenger as well? Or did I misunderstand?
That's a great example of the 'third element': composition, exposure and opportunity.
Sometimes you can make opportunity "happen" through equipment with more reach or foreknolwedge. But sometimes things just happen and a mediocre shot is more powerful than none at all.
Algorithm seems to really like portraits. Every one I uploaded, it scored very highly. Threw in Afghan Girl by Steve McCurry https://keegan.regaind.io/p/yBJXfxHeTEWtvtGDxgupaA to see what would happen.
It does like contrast! Hm, the score change is sufficiently low to be within the error bars I'd say.
I agree that the upped clarity is less beautiful, but it adds a nice touch of sharpness which Keegan likes a lot as well!
No face detection? It noticed there was a baby in my picture and commented on the expression:
https://keegan.regaind.io/p/XCBCz-9_TrC31c4Opa1mdQ
I'm sure there are many different definitions of face detection. Care to elaborate on what kind of face detection it doesn't have?
"You need to invest in some studio lighting… The pic is not very interesting… It's flawed, but you'll get there: keep working on your lighting, framing, and composition. It's only a 3.2/10."
I think the fact that the AI is developed by Regaind (https://regaind.io/) must be taken into account. Their service is not intended for artsy pictures. It is rather targeted at people who have 1000 photos on their reflex from their last vacations and want to make a relevant and beautiful album of 50 photos to remember their trip, but don't want to spend two weeks comparing and selecting the right ones.
Exactly =) The target is not professional photographers but pretty much everyone else taking pictures everyday with their smartphones.
Artsy photos are more often than not wonderful for reasons which are not way too semantic for us for now - situations, etc, and which are way beyond what standard photographers do!
In my experience, even amongst vacation snapshots, the best tend to be of the accidentally artsy variety. I suppose this algorithm would completely fail to recognize the hilarity of the mirroring sphere of a tourist's perfectly bowling-ball-bald head in front of an apse, hovering under the blob of light that is the eye of the pantheon dome on a phone snap. I know I did, (miss it) on the first few times I scrolled through the series.
Generally I feel tempted to file this site under fun with phrase generators, with some ML thrown in to make it slightly more interesting than purely random phrase generator toys. But are there really no use cases for automated checks of aesthetic conventions? Sifting through the data dump of a full day of wedding shots maybe? I know I would be tempted to start with a computer generated shortlist. Mate it with face detection so that you can cluster by subset of attendees (each combination of faces captured must be present at least once in the final set) and... well I guess they already use systems like that, it's 2016.
An entirely unrelated idea in the general area of photography, algorithms and human learning that I still miss is this: an option in manual mode that takes a full auto shot right after the manual one, exposing how good or bad the algorithms are vs the operator. Or do some cameras have something like that? Do manufacturers omit it to not expose deficiencies in their algorithms? Do they omit it to not hurt the feelings of customers when they are worse than auto mode?
This is indeed a "fun" project which showcases the technology and provides (I think) fairly relevant comments (trust me - a random generator is much worse, we had terrible comments at the beginning of the project).
The other technology modules you describe (face recognition etc) are indeed requirements for a semi or fully automated curation system.
Indeed, it does not like my 4x5s, but it does like some anime figure pictures I took with my cell phone.
I think it basically looks to see if something is in focus, and you know the "rule of thirds", which it must have learned from custom-cropped photos uploaded to 500px.
Here I played with colors and color temp on a post-sunset landscape, and the resulting image, while really not great --in fact, plain weird-- is rated 9.3
Does the system have a notion of how sure it is of the rating it gives? [Edit: should it say "without a doubt"? There should be some doubt.]
(Also, is it deterministic (same image always get the same rating); it sure appears to be and it's certainly what people expect of a bot, but that's not how humans rate things...)
To be honest, I kinda like the image. It might not be great to you but it has a nice spooky fantasy air to it to me. As to wether it should be considered a good picture, I have no idea.
wow, thanks for the link! those are really nice photographs, beautifully framed and very artistic (for pure art - that woman leaning on a wall, with the triangular shadow across the building, come on - wow!) and obviously even more informative to us 66 years later than when they were made - that is true art, wow.
one quick question - the page you linked starts with a top picture and then a set, by "the second picture of this fantastic set" did you mean the second picture on the page (gondolier in dark canal with tight ray of light from above) or second in the "set" (guy crossing tracks running with empty rickshaw)
Posted a masterpiece by Stephen Shore, Keegan didn't care for it.
Static composition, my eyes don't really know where to look and the pic is not very exciting… It's flawed, but you'll get there: keep working on your composition and lighting. This is at most 3.8/10.
#messy#boring
I have a DSLR and several fairly good lenses and like taking pictures, but I'm by all accounts a layman, and seeing as I'm unfamiliar with that photo, obviously not well versed in the industry.
But honest question: Is that a good picture? I don't assume that the AI is trained enough to give accurate critique on all photos, but in this case I might agree with it.
I'm not trolling nor mean any offense, but is there quantifiable skill behind that photo, or is it just as subjective as painted art? A simple example would be a Pollock painting which I don't care for at all.
Art MA holder here: Pollock is a really good example of the hard-to-pin-down quality of optical balance or energy or "eye". It's a learned thing like most aspects of culture. There are personal variations in "eye" judgement but enough consensus to keep the art market afloat. It does also have something to do with hierarchical structure, fractals etc., especially in Pollock's structurally simple drop paintings. His idea was a conceptual innovation but now does look pretty boring.
You might also dislike Pollock not only for being boring but for being associated with a tedious CIA-sponsored moment in art in the 50s, in which case I applaud you.
I mean, is that a masterpiece? I ask as someone who is unaware of Stephen Shore and has never seen this picture before. As someone living in 2016, that looks like a random picture of a gas station someone took on a road trip. I agree with Keegan here, it's boring.
I'm sure there's some historical context or something I'm missing out on here, but that's just my take looking at the picture.
Stephen Shore is one of my favourites. It might help to think of this image as representative of a body of work, which makes it legible. (and, let's not forget, financially valuable). It's not the greatest Shore image.
Shore has a good "eye", which is something subjective that needs training to develop and recognize. It's very plausible that the particularity of a given artist's "eye" will be quantifiable by AI systems soon.
Shore wrote a popular book called "The Nature of Photographs". Recommended.
I am also unaware of Stephen Shore, and have not seen this picture before. I guess we can chalk it up to different tastes - I think this picture is amazing. It captures the feeling of the place.
It doesn't matter, the point is that a feeling is captured.
Many people seem to think that photography is solely documentary, but that is only one possible aspect. You also have control over what is in and out of the picture, where objects are relative to each other, the relative tones and brightness of objects, etc., and can use that to tell a story that's not strictly true. If you've ever been composing a shot, noticed that there is a big pile of garbage in the frame, and shifted the angle slightly, you're already doing this.
Seems like a low score. Again though, it's not really clear why. "Bad lighting" seems odd, because maybe I have no taste but the lighting is the reason for the shot in the first place. For reference, here's the original: https://www.flickr.com/photos/stefandufresne/16091643487/in/...
So far, AFAICT, it is a big fan of single focus thing in foreground with lots of blur in the background.
Edit 2: Okay whaaaaaaatttt I'm really disagreeing with a lot here. Maybe I just think some of my shots are better than they really are, but 4.1 for this is crazy https://keegan.regaind.io/p/y3LaI_J0R6a33eJ_fOQfew
If you click the slightly hidden "get more feedback" button it shows:
Subject well framed: 100%
Super sharp subject: 71%
Great composition: 68%
Pleasant blur: 57%
Great lightning: 35%
Well chosen background: 33%
Interesting/original subject: 32%
Good timing: 26%
So it's not very happy with half the categories but scores 9.4/10, so the score is definitely not an unweighted mean! (geometric or arithmetic).
As amazing as the advancements to image recognition technology have been, I'm equally astonished of the progress corresponding language generation.
I would be interested to see a Turing test with this tool versus a real photographer analysis.
Restrict the "analysis" to 3 or 4 sentences along with a score. The participant goal would be to figure out which analysis came from the AI and which came from the photographer. Would be interesting to see the results...
I'm! You can get in touch with us at hello /at/ regaind.io
You can have a look at your webpage for all that we do (https://regaind.io), but yeah, automatic improvement is on the list of potential things we would like to do :)
One of the issues is sometimes, it's okay to do things in a non-standard way for effect. The other issue is it seems to think the only thing that matters in photography is depth of field.
For example, this kind of generic picture of my son during the fall got an 8.2:
http://imgur.com/a/SOFE0
Where as this other picture I took, one I think is technically superior recently got a 7.1:
http://imgur.com/a/VeEL9
And then there was this one I took in Rome, which got a comment of "not enough blur" which is the exact opposite of what I wanted. This is a fiat in rome, the background is the entire point. rated at 6.2
http://imgur.com/a/zLStt
Compared to this pretty generic musuem pic... that's not really interesting in any way, but managed to get an 8.2 (probably because of the blur)
http://imgur.com/a/Szc9I
Judge on a single sample, do you ? :) That's a fairly strong statement based on a fairly small dataset :(
But yeah, our heuristics to ignore some content (e.g. websites screenshots) sometimes trip on real pictures. There's still a lot of room for improvement :)
Yeah it's super harsh with street signs or that kind of large text on pictures. The protection is there to avoid saying really silly stuff on utilities bills and other kinds of paperwork. I'll add this example to the ones we should accept.
"Great color and amazing angle. It's okay, but I want to see more; keep working on your composition! A solid 5.7/10. Not bad, but I'm sure you can do better!"
How the heck is this feedback supposed to be useful / helpful / actionable?
144 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 193 ms ] threadOnce upon a time, in certain newbie photo critique forums, pranksters would upload a renowned photographers image for critique... Hilarious feedback from new photographers showing off their critiquing prowess.
Weird to imply such a strict delineation between photography and art.
The humor is from imagining a robot pan great works because of implementation flaws. "Mona Lisa. Muddy and drab. 2/10"
Nothing really to do with me trying to classify what is/isn't art.
What you might call conceptual photography, on the other hand, is "AI-complete". It's as hard as literature to appreciate, you definitely need a full human-equivalent AI. Roland Barthes' ideas of the studium and the punctum start to open up the intellectual depth of that kind of photo.
This kind of project is possibly credible as a rater of formal quality against some ideal norm, maybe stretching to understanding composition in a crude sense. But everyone knows that it's the unexpected but visually compelling feature that makes an image good. (Or alternatively the significance of its content.) Standard strategies like the "rule of thirds" can only produce formulaic images.
"It's not super amazing. It's…something I guess; you could do better. Try improving your colors. This is at most 3.9/10. #boring"
Yeah, Henri, improve your colors you lazy hack! ;)
and Autio: https://keegan.regaind.io/p/qzqjM1CPRxGtkL1GQ4KL0g
But I get it. It's a great tool for beginners to see their rookie faults and address the basics [1]before they can foray into more intermediate photography. And then break the basics [2] in order to know why breaking the rules work and sometimes don't.
Semi-related (to the optics/mechanics) is this tool[3]
[1]https://www.flickr.com/photos/msc72/3184463442
[2]https://www.flickr.com/groups/1271834@N25/
[3]http://camerasim.com/apps/original-camerasim/web/
Side note: Is this bot on Facebook Messenger as well? Or did I misunderstand?
...This photo is alright! I give you a 7.1/10. That's a very decent photo for a start! Can you show me something even better?
Sometimes you can make opportunity "happen" through equipment with more reach or foreknolwedge. But sometimes things just happen and a mediocre shot is more powerful than none at all.
https://keegan.regaind.io/p/YLzqGGvuSFOv7PwLl8qC8A
Same image with clarity upped to 100% (horrible, IMHO), 8.6:
https://keegan.regaind.io/p/JbMQUyfBTNuoAWveabPCwg
Uploaded the second picture of this fantastic set by a 1950's photographer from Hong Kong: http://designyoutrust.com/2016/02/hong-kong-in-the-1950s-cap...
Many of them get labeled as #badcolors or #boring, I guess it might be related to the lack of color features...
See for instance their demo here : https://regaind.io/demo/.
Generally I feel tempted to file this site under fun with phrase generators, with some ML thrown in to make it slightly more interesting than purely random phrase generator toys. But are there really no use cases for automated checks of aesthetic conventions? Sifting through the data dump of a full day of wedding shots maybe? I know I would be tempted to start with a computer generated shortlist. Mate it with face detection so that you can cluster by subset of attendees (each combination of faces captured must be present at least once in the final set) and... well I guess they already use systems like that, it's 2016.
An entirely unrelated idea in the general area of photography, algorithms and human learning that I still miss is this: an option in manual mode that takes a full auto shot right after the manual one, exposing how good or bad the algorithms are vs the operator. Or do some cameras have something like that? Do manufacturers omit it to not expose deficiencies in their algorithms? Do they omit it to not hurt the feelings of customers when they are worse than auto mode?
I think it basically looks to see if something is in focus, and you know the "rule of thirds", which it must have learned from custom-cropped photos uploaded to 500px.
https://keegan.regaind.io/p/04t9ZlbZRDqbc2mPx-4CvA
Does the system have a notion of how sure it is of the rating it gives? [Edit: should it say "without a doubt"? There should be some doubt.]
(Also, is it deterministic (same image always get the same rating); it sure appears to be and it's certainly what people expect of a bot, but that's not how humans rate things...)
https://keegan.regaind.io/p/BRINmnczQ-yY7wLn0xbaYA
but says that The background really adds something special. The background is... full black?
And it hates this image (4.7):
https://keegan.regaind.io/p/nWu-YSRgSrWWfwxUgUorcQ
and gives it a "good timing" of 35%. The timing is what makes this photograph ;-)
Also, while direct links work, the back button doesn't seem to update the content of the page?
What's your browser? (re: back button problem)
one quick question - the page you linked starts with a top picture and then a set, by "the second picture of this fantastic set" did you mean the second picture on the page (gondolier in dark canal with tight ray of light from above) or second in the "set" (guy crossing tracks running with empty rickshaw)
Static composition, my eyes don't really know where to look and the pic is not very exciting… It's flawed, but you'll get there: keep working on your composition and lighting. This is at most 3.8/10. #messy#boring
Here is the photo http://www.fubiz.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/stephenshore...
But honest question: Is that a good picture? I don't assume that the AI is trained enough to give accurate critique on all photos, but in this case I might agree with it.
I'm not trolling nor mean any offense, but is there quantifiable skill behind that photo, or is it just as subjective as painted art? A simple example would be a Pollock painting which I don't care for at all.
You might also dislike Pollock not only for being boring but for being associated with a tedious CIA-sponsored moment in art in the 50s, in which case I applaud you.
I'm sure there's some historical context or something I'm missing out on here, but that's just my take looking at the picture.
Shore has a good "eye", which is something subjective that needs training to develop and recognize. It's very plausible that the particularity of a given artist's "eye" will be quantifiable by AI systems soon.
Shore wrote a popular book called "The Nature of Photographs". Recommended.
Many people seem to think that photography is solely documentary, but that is only one possible aspect. You also have control over what is in and out of the picture, where objects are relative to each other, the relative tones and brightness of objects, etc., and can use that to tell a story that's not strictly true. If you've ever been composing a shot, noticed that there is a big pile of garbage in the frame, and shifted the angle slightly, you're already doing this.
https://keegan.regaind.io/p/sqs8Z8RgSsuaSG3gLxo0bQ
https://keegan.regaind.io/p/dNMYqs3aSpa_x0fYMU_AhA
I'm not really seeing it couching me though:
https://keegan.regaind.io/p/6QD0ycG3QTK1uM2IbIslSw
"This landscape is good, but could be great". Not really sure what to do with that.
https://keegan.regaind.io/p/lhCz67aBTnmI5GB9sWO4cQ
Seems like a low score. Again though, it's not really clear why. "Bad lighting" seems odd, because maybe I have no taste but the lighting is the reason for the shot in the first place. For reference, here's the original: https://www.flickr.com/photos/stefandufresne/16091643487/in/...
So far, AFAICT, it is a big fan of single focus thing in foreground with lots of blur in the background.
Edit: I'm having trouble getting it to ever like black and white shots: https://keegan.regaind.io/p/-NZR7e1FTJGtpMN3BPYlAg
Edit 2: Okay whaaaaaaatttt I'm really disagreeing with a lot here. Maybe I just think some of my shots are better than they really are, but 4.1 for this is crazy https://keegan.regaind.io/p/y3LaI_J0R6a33eJ_fOQfew
Didn't try B&W yet, don't have many pictures like that.
"Well done!"
That being said, it's fun to see where photos fall in its grading system, even if I personally disagree with it.
For example, this portrait by Vivian Maier gets a 4.2 https://keegan.regaind.io/p/9VJdlageRTusSf7Z2qDQPA
Subject well framed: 100% Super sharp subject: 71% Great composition: 68% Pleasant blur: 57% Great lightning: 35% Well chosen background: 33% Interesting/original subject: 32% Good timing: 26%
So it's not very happy with half the categories but scores 9.4/10, so the score is definitely not an unweighted mean! (geometric or arithmetic).
https://keegan.regaind.io/p/BpYbZznQQQObZa9BDHH7AQ
https://keegan.regaind.io/p/rIr8UAIxTuSxGeZg5FumbA
https://keegan.regaind.io/p/8duBvzXmRfGAg7DpdJQSiA
I would be interested to see a Turing test with this tool versus a real photographer analysis.
Restrict the "analysis" to 3 or 4 sentences along with a score. The participant goal would be to figure out which analysis came from the AI and which came from the photographer. Would be interesting to see the results...
Are you working on more than classification? What about automatic improvements, including not just lightning but also straightening, cropping, etc.
You can have a look at your webpage for all that we do (https://regaind.io), but yeah, automatic improvement is on the list of potential things we would like to do :)
For example, this kind of generic picture of my son during the fall got an 8.2: http://imgur.com/a/SOFE0
Where as this other picture I took, one I think is technically superior recently got a 7.1: http://imgur.com/a/VeEL9
And then there was this one I took in Rome, which got a comment of "not enough blur" which is the exact opposite of what I wanted. This is a fiat in rome, the background is the entire point. rated at 6.2 http://imgur.com/a/zLStt
Compared to this pretty generic musuem pic... that's not really interesting in any way, but managed to get an 8.2 (probably because of the blur) http://imgur.com/a/Szc9I
A photo of a street sign is definitely a photo ;-)
https://keegan.regaind.io/p/v5bCFkeRRYSvendxCM73yA
How the heck is this feedback supposed to be useful / helpful / actionable?