Using a computer to judge the aesthetic value of a photo

Penn State researchers have announced the recent launch of a new online photo-rating system called Acquine (Aesthetic Quality Inference Engine) for automatically determining the aesthetic value of a photo. According to a researcher involved with the project, it is the first publicly available tool for automatically determining the aesthetic value of an image. Users can upload their own images for rating or test the system by providing a link to any image online. The system provides an aesthetic rating, with a score from zero to 100, within seconds. Acquine extracts and uses visual aspects such as color saturation, color distribution and photo composition to give any uploaded image a rating from zero to 100. The system learns to associate these aspects with the way humans rate photos based on thousands of previously-rated photographs in online photo-sharing Web sites such as photo.net.