The Psychometrics of Photographic Cropping: The Influence of Colour, Meaning, and Expertise

In Art and Visual Perception, Rudolf Arnheim, following on from Denman Ross's A Theory of Pure Design, proposed a Gestalt theory of visual composition. The current paper assesses a physicalist interpretation of Arnheim's theory, calculating an image's centre of mass (CoM). Three types of data are used: a large, representative collection of art photographs of recognised quality; croppings by experts and non-experts of photographs; and Ross and Arnheim's procedure of placing a frame around objects such as Arnheim's two black disks. Compared with control images, the CoM of art photographs was closer to an axis (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal), as was the case for photographic croppings. However, stronger, within-image, paired comparison studies, comparing art photographs with the CoM moved on or off an axis (the ‘gamma-ramp study’), or comparing adjacent croppings on or off an axis (the ‘spider-web study’), showed no support for the Arnheim–Ross theory. Finally, studies moving a frame around two disks, of different size, greyness, or background, did not support Arnheim's Gestalt theory. Although the detailed results did not support the Arnheim–Ross theory, several significant results were found which clearly require explanation by any adequate theory of the aesthetics of visual composition.

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“…The data re-analysed here are described more fully in Study 4 of McManus et al (2011), and only a brief description is necessary here.…”

Section: Study 3: Cropping Of Photographsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The method follows the cropping procedure described elsewhere (McManus et al 2011), and also briefly described above for Study 3.…”

Section: Study 5: Cropping Of Arnheim's Own Geometric Stimulusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Arnheim's Gestalt Theory of Visual Balance: Examining the Compositional Structure of Art Photographs and Abstract Images

2011

Self Cite

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“…They analyze the crops with respect to the composition guidelines recommended in photography and art literature. In McManus et al [15] the authors analyze the psychic aspects of Image Cropping and the influence of color, semantics and expertise of the users on the resulting crops.…”

Section: State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

Saliency Based Image Cropping

Ardizzone

Bruno

Mazzola

2013

Image Analysis and Processing – ICIAP 2013

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Image cropping is a technique that is used to select the most relevant areas of an image, discarding the useless ones. Handmade selection, especially in case of large photo collections, is a time consuming task. Automatic image cropping techniques may help users, suggesting to them which part of the image is the most relevant, according to specific criteria. We suppose that the most visually salient areas of a photo are also the most relevant ones to the users. In this paper we present an extended version of our previously proposed method, to extract the saliency map of an image, which is based on the analysis of the distribution of the interest points of the image. Three different interest point extraction algorithms are evaluated within an automatic image cropping system, to study the effectiveness of the related saliency maps for this task. We furthermore compared our results with two state of the art saliency detection techniques. Tests have been conducted onto an online available dataset, made of 5000 images which have been manually labeled by 9 users.

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“…In contrast, there are many studies on how visual objects must be positioned within the boundaries of a picture to yield an aesthetically pleasing result (for examples, see Arnheim, 1982; Palmer et al, 2008; McManus et al, 2011a,b). Overall, these studies provide evidence for reproducible and reliable aesthetic preferences that await explanation by a theory of visual aesthetic composition (McManus et al, 2011a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frames as visual links between paintings and the museum environment: an analysis of statistical image properties

Redies

Groß

2013

Front. Psychol.

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Frames provide a visual link between artworks and their surround. We asked how image properties change as an observer zooms out from viewing a painting alone, to viewing the painting with its frame and, finally, the framed painting in its museum environment (museum scene). To address this question, we determined three higher-order image properties that are based on histograms of oriented luminance gradients. First, complexity was measured as the sum of the strengths of all gradients in the image. Second, we determined the self-similarity of histograms of the orientated gradients at different levels of spatial analysis. Third, we analyzed how much gradient strength varied across orientations (anisotropy). Results were obtained for three art museums that exhibited paintings from three major periods of Western art. In all three museums, the mean complexity of the frames was higher than that of the paintings or the museum scenes. Frames thus provide a barrier of complexity between the paintings and their exterior. By contrast, self-similarity and anisotropy values of images of framed paintings were intermediate between the images of the paintings and the museum scenes, i.e., the frames provided a transition between the paintings and their surround. We also observed differences between the three museums that may reflect modified frame usage in different art periods. For example, frames in the museum for 20th century art tended to be smaller and less complex than in the two other two museums that exhibit paintings from earlier art periods (13th–18th century and 19th century, respectively). Finally, we found that the three properties did not depend on the type of reproduction of the paintings (photographs in museums, scans from books or images from the Google Art Project). To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the relation between frames and paintings by measuring physically defined, higher-order image properties.

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The Psychometrics of Photographic Cropping: The Influence of Colour, Meaning, and Expertise

Cited by 39 publications

References 22 publications

Arnheim's Gestalt Theory of Visual Balance: Examining the Compositional Structure of Art Photographs and Abstract Images

Arnheim's Gestalt Theory of Visual Balance: Examining the Compositional Structure of Art Photographs and Abstract Images

Saliency Based Image Cropping

Frames as visual links between paintings and the museum environment: an analysis of statistical image properties

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