Topic: Want to know how good you photos are? Ask a computer!

[Francois]

I got this this morning and have been playing with it a bit for fun.
If you want a totally unbiased opinion on how good your pictures are, the best person to ask is... wait for it... artificial intelligence!
There is a new website where you can ask Keegan, a computerized "photo editor" for real life comments about your photos. I tried it and was really surprised. It seems to be able to make some quite informative judgement about the images you feed it. I tried to stump it a few times and it somehow manages to avoid traps most of the time.

Best of all, it gives you a score for your photos and gives you milestones to reach so that you improve your photography.
Granted, it's probably trained on the usual Flickr exploration type images but still it is quite interesting.
For instance it knows when you used some type of blur, it reads your composition and lets you know if the background of the image is too messy for easy reading.

https://keegan.regaind.io/

[Indofunk]

I hate this "Keegan" guy, and not just because he looks like a hipster

j/k. But honestly, "his" criteria for beauty are pretty different from mine. For example, "he" said this photo is blurry, out of focus, too bright, and the subjects aren't well-placed. Which is all true, but to me, that gives it a higher rating than a photo that is perfectly in focus, well lit, and has a better subject I think "he" gave it a 2 out of 10 or something 

I'll admit that it is fun to give "him" my own favorite photos and watch him rip them to shreds I think my average score is around 3, and "he" has never given me anything above a 4

[hookstrapped]

Yay! Taste and judgment by a set algorithm!!

But, seriously, artificial intelligence is nothing new when it comes to tastemakers.

[Francois]

The funny thing is I fed it a scan of a Gumby toy (I just laid Gumby on the scanner and pressed the button) and I got a super high score. Something like 8.1!

Your subject looks right at home and all cozy in your composition. You could think about hanging this one up. 8.1/10 - you deserve it, champ. WOW this is a great start! You're a pro right? Impress me more!

Sorry for the digital pic

[Indofunk]

So let's try to reverse engineer this algorithm. It wants a clearly-defined subject that is either centered or rule-of-thirds'ed, very little clutter in the background (though it seems to like bokeh), sharp focus, and crisp clean colors. It seems to like pretty narrow DoF (cf, clearly-defined subject and bokeh in the background). Oh, and hates Polaroids (I uploaded one of my favorite SX70 shots and it said that it's not a photo )

[Late Developer]

All well and good - but can it differentiate film from digital....?

What a pile of poo! How does such a website even come into / remain in existence? Do users get spammed (and/or offered a load of other pointless stuff)?

Sorry, I'm in one of my less receptive / less tolerant moods today.....

[Francois]

That, I don't have any answer to that...
But they do have a deal with both Google and Facebook for the login infrastructure, so it can't be all that bad in the sense that you are unlikely to receive some spam for some male attribute enlarging gimmick. 

[zapsnaps]

I LOVE this! After years of taking snaps nobody wants to look at, let alone buy or exhibit, I tried to fool my new best hipster friend. So I sent him a ManRay: 7.7. A Roversi scored 8.8. So if I then sent one of mine, I'd get a 5, right? No - cough - a 9! I think the idea is just to have a single person (in these 3 cases), filling the frame. Try one of your own portraits & see.

[Bryan]

First photo I submitted did great.  After reading the comments above I had an idea what it was looking for.

This is the photo:
Rachael & Vera in the Sun by Bryan Chernick, on Flickr

And the response:

I love dogs. Can I pet your dog? Somehow you managed to save your subject in all that blur. WOW this is amazing, beautifully placed subject, and the lighting, yass. Pretty good shot…you should hang it up. 10.0/10 - you deserve it, champ. Epic! This 10/10 earns you the platinum ribbon
! Your dog looks better than mine, special achievement unlocked! There are 16 more achievements to discover! WOW this is a great start! You're a pro right? Impress me more!

[zapsnaps]

Fooled him. I submitted the HCB bike photo - that photo - and it scored 4.7. So much for (digital) algorithms I was told, "You nailed the subject placement but it's not super amazing. Overall, this pic is not intriguing… You should improve your composition. It's only a 4.7/10."

[Bryan]

Fooled him. I submitted the HCB bike photo - that photo - and it scored 4.7. So much for (digital) algorithms I was told, "You nailed the subject placement but it's not super amazing. Overall, this pic is not intriguing… You should improve your composition. It's only a 4.7/10."

Based on the photos I submitted it seems to prefer color over black and white and it loves the blur.

[Adam Doe]

The funny thing is I fed it a scan of a Gumby toy (I just laid Gumby on the scanner and pressed the button) and I got a super high score. Something like 8.1!

Your subject looks right at home and all cozy in your composition. You could think about hanging this one up. 8.1/10 - you deserve it, champ. WOW this is a great start! You're a pro right? Impress me more!

Sorry for the digital pic

You would've scored a 10 if you had included Pokey.

[Francois]

Probably would 

I tried sending him some other stuff from famous photographers.
Shulman gets a 6.8 for the Spencer residence.
Ansel's Moonrise over hernandez gets a 6.4
one of Hiro's colorful fashion photos gets a 7.4

So the computer does prefer color and people...

[Bryan]

Probably would 

I tried sending him some other stuff from famous photographers.
Shulman gets a 6.8 for the Spencer residence.
Ansel's Moonrise over hernandez gets a 6.4
one of Hiro's colorful fashion photos gets a 7.4

So the computer does prefer color and people...

...and animals.  Like Adam said, including Pokey would have given you a higher score.

[macfred]

So the computer does prefer color and people...

...and animals ...

It does ...

Sheep by Andreas, on Flickr

“Very lovely lighting, and strong idea, interesting subject. Overall, you got it, chap! 8.5/10 - you deserve it, champ.”

[Indofunk]

I bet if you artificially introduce blur into the background it'd be a 10!

[Francois]

I'm starting to think that if the great masters get a score of a bit over 6, that means that we ain't as bad as we often think.

[Indofunk]

I'm starting to think that if the great masters get a score of a bit over 6, that means that we ain't as bad as we often think.

No, no, no, you're getting it all wrong. What it really means is that we've been following false prophets and our so-called "masters" aren't masters at all! Those silly folks, they should have been using color film (before it was available) and fast lenses (also before they were available) so that they could achieve that magical and all-important BLURRRRRRRR. Who needs f/16? I'll be shooting at f/1.4 all day every day from now on. Basically, *GOOD* photography wasn't invented until 2010.

Someday you'll like my photos, Keegan, just you wait!! *runs away crying*

[Francois]

I'm with you on that generic quality criteria thing.
But I've been playing with his brain a bit this morning. It's actually more fun than I initially thought!

For one thing, he didn't like getting a screenshot of PacMan... he said he cares only about photos or something along these lines.
Then I gave him a nice illustration and he said it was a nice cartoon.
That's when I decided to mess with his mind a bit, and I think he liked it 
Well, OK, it probably was because he was messing with something else when he saw the picture I sent him. It was something I just found through google image search using keywords that only a teenager could love. Lets just say it involved some unmentionable bodyparts and it was in completely bad taste. But this was his comment:

Nice timing, and your subject gets a gold star. This portrait is alright! I give you a 7.3/10.

I don't know what exceptional timing there was.

[Francois]

Now this is interesting... I sent it more rubbish just for fun.

A picture of a sheet on the clothesline. 6.6 without wind, 7.0 with wind.

The angle is good. I can't find the subject. This is...a mess. Overall, this pic is just…ok. This deserves a 6.6/10.

Not your typical angle, but I like it. This image is good, but it could be great. Let's give it a 7.0/10.

A picture of my big toe: 2.6

I'm not so sure about your lighting and the pic is not very exciting… It's…something I guess; you could do better. Try improving your lighting, composition, and colors. It's only a 2.6/10.

A picture of all my toes: 5.0

Your subject gets a gold star but I don't think this is as interesting as you thought… This pic is not amazing… You should improve your composition. This is at most 5.0/10.

It likes diagonal lines a whole lot...

[Bryan]

Another test, this photo has blur but it's not that great.  Anyone want to buy it?

You're the blur master! What a catch, beautifully placed subject, and great detail! Overall, you should sell this! 9.8/10 - you deserve it, champ. This level of technicity earns you the technical ribbon
!

[Francois]

WOW!
That is definitely the best picture I've never seen!
Maybe they should have a medal printing system so that you could put a certification on the back to prove to people how great it is!

While playing with this, I've been thinking. Isn't a site like that a great way to "acquire" some free images of great quality without paying a cent?

[02Pilot]

While playing with this, I've been thinking. Isn't a site like that a great way to "acquire" some free images of great quality without paying a cent?

The first thought I had when I saw this was: What sort of rights do you sign away by uploading your photos?

[Indofunk]

While playing with this, I've been thinking. Isn't a site like that a great way to "acquire" some free images of great quality without paying a cent?

The first thought I had when I saw this was: What sort of rights do you sign away by uploading your photos?

Here:

License of the Content provided by the Users Regaind

By using the Services, the User expressly agrees Regaind final and irrevocable (and represents and warrants that it owns all rights and permissions necessary and sufficient to do so) a non-exclusive license to use the Content and Free for the purpose of supply, development, and improvement of services, as well as any goods and services derived with the right to grant sublicenses, for the world and for the entire legal term of copyright protection provided by both French and foreign laws and international conventions, including all future extensions, whereby Regaind is authorized to:

download, copy, reproduce and store the Content, in whole or in part, in such numbers he pleases, in all sizes, all colors and all languages, for all technical processes and all known and unknown media to date, including but not limited to all paper documents, electronic, digital, magnetic or otherwise exploited by computer (including disk, floppy disk, tape), within the limits of the purpose defined above;
perform, display, transmit and communicate to the public the contents and possible adaptations and / or translation, in whole or in part, in any place, public or not, in any format, by any means or process whatsoever, known or unknown to date, including, without limitation, by wire or wireless, digital or non-digital television (terrestrial, satellite, cable), internet and other electronic communications networks and, more generally, by other means of communication, within the purpose defined above;
perform, display, transmit and communicate to the public the contents and possible adaptations and / or translation, in whole or in part, in any place, public or not, in any format, by any means or process whatsoever, known or unknown to date, including, without limitation, by wire or wireless, digital or non-digital television (terrestrial, satellite, cable), internet and other electronic communications networks and, more generally, by other means of communication, within the purpose defined above;
translate content in any (the) language or computer language, and represent, reproduce, distribute, adapt and otherwise exploit his translations, under the terms and within the limits of the purpose defined above.
License of the Content provided by Users to recipients of Contents

The User also grants every person he sends a Content via the Service, a non-exclusive license to use such Content allowing access such Content on the Service and to use, reproduce, represent , display, save, copy, transmit and distribute the extent permitted by the functionality of the User selected Service.

That's a Google translate from French, so maybe one of our resident French speakers can verify it. https://regaind.io/privacy-and-terms

[Francois]

Here's the license they give for keegan

About Keegan

Keegan is an artificial intelligence created by Regaind, a startup specialized in automatic image analysis. After being trained by professional photographers, Keegan is now able to describe the strengths and weaknesses in your image, in order to help you identify specific areas in which you can improve.... and to let you challenge your friends on your score! Keegan gives 5/10 to a decent photo, 7/10 to a very good shot and 9/10 to an exceptional image. If you have any questions or feedback for Keegan, we're happy to hear from you at keegan@regaind.io.
Why "Keegan"?

Keegan learnt to speak thanks to "real Keegan", an american photographer living in Paris. We thank "real Keegan" for giving his own words and expressions to "virtual Keegan". Without him, our Keegan would have had a french accent and a french sense of humour -which can be tricky to appreciate.
Our privacy policy

Regaind recognizes and respects your privacy and will not share your photos without your consent. You can decide to share your photos on Facebook, Twitter or via email by clicking on the relevant icons. If your photo scores high enough, you're given the opportunity to post your picture on Keegan’s public hall of fame, by providing an username and clicking on the sharing button. According to our terms of use, your photos are stored with the sole purposes of letting you share your photos, giving you feedback on your progression, and improving Keegan's performance. Your photos will remain yours and you can delete them from our servers anytime by deleting them on your profile page.

According to our terms of use, your photos are stored with the sole purposes of letting you share your photos, giving you feedback on your progression, and improving Keegan's performance. Your photos will remain yours and you can delete them from our servers anytime by going to your profile page, or by sending us an email at keegan@regaind.io, with your IP address and the links to your photos if you only want to delete some of them.
Keegan For developers

Keegan’s comments, labels and scores can be tested for free through our API. Contact us at keegan@regaind.io for more info.

from what I can see, the company started with not much money in the bank

au capital de 20 384 euros

that's 22530.44 US Dollar for a company that seems to do web hosting...

[Francois]

If you did like stupid me and logged-on using gmail, here's how to remove that registration.
https://security.google.com/settings/security/permissions?pli=1
click on regaind and click remove

But make sure you delete all the stupid junk you sent keegan first.

[Francois]

Last night I got thinking about this a.i.
I was thinking about what that means about the current tastes of the people in photography.
The Keegan ai didn't learn by itself what is a good picture and what is a bad one. It was trained by humans who gave it rules and fed it pictures that were preselected to teach it what the humans want.
So in a sense Keegan thinks like the everyday layperson, but without being able to make an emotional judgement about what it sees. It can't figure out much about the subject itself apart from a few very wide categories.
I was looking at its hall of fame and was struck by how much the picture in there look like stock photography.

[02Pilot]

Yep, the "Hall of Fame" gives away the game. It's technically good photos of incredibly generic content, or put more colloquially, it's full of nice pictures of stuff people like to see pictures of (poor grammatical construction fully intended).

[Indofunk]

But make sure you delete all the stupid junk you sent keegan first.

That's not going to help. Regaind will still have it on their servers. Remember the Snapchat fiasco? And they even stated in their ToS that they will delete all photos. Rest assured, all your uploads are safe and sound on multiple redundant clusters of servers in Iowa (and Taiwan, and India, and France, and Germany, and ....)

[Francois]

Well... at least when you delete a photo and click on it to see it, it gives you a 404

[Indofunk]

Yup, because it removes the link from the database. The file itself is still safe and sound in Taiwan