Marginal Revolution: The Beauty Function

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The Beauty Function

Three Israeli computer scientists from Tel Aviv University (TAU) have developed the ultimate enhancement tool for retouching digital images. Called the Beauty Function, their program scans an image of your face, studies it and produces a slightly more beautiful you.

Photoshop artists, make up artists and cosmetic surgeons have been doing this for years, of course, but it's quite interesting that a computer can identify beauty in a photograph and make the requisite changes. Here's the story and here's a page of results.

See also my previous post Beautiful People are Mean and thanks to Macneil for the link.

Posted by Alex Tabarrok on February 26, 2007 at 03:14 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink

Comments

The interesting thing is that at first glance, it seems the biggest change in women is changing shape of the lips (mostly changing the expression, but also giving them a bit more classic lip-shape), while the most obvious change in men is separating the eyes more. There is some lip shaping in the men, but it seems in the opposite direction. Also, where in the women it makes them appear to smile a bit more, in men it makes them appear to smile a tiny bit less (at least for the guy on the right, and maybe the one in the middle).

Posted by: tripp at Feb 26, 2007 3:22:06 PM

The program also enforces greater symmetry. This is easily seen in the eyes of the ladies and the eyes of the lower right man. It probably also helps that they started with reasonably attractive women in the first place.

Impressive results given the minor changes.

Posted by: squik at Feb 26, 2007 3:36:28 PM

Hm.. I must not have the "recognize beauty" gene cause I can't tell which is supposed to be the pretty picture for any of those.

Posted by: liberty at Feb 26, 2007 3:42:42 PM

liberty: if you look carefully, the bottom photos are a little bit "evened out", less distracting. It's quite clever - a reverse version of the old "face morph" joke applets.

Posted by: anonymous at Feb 26, 2007 4:08:23 PM

Online dating sites should offer this as a premium service.

Posted by: Yan Li at Feb 26, 2007 4:14:22 PM

The program also enforces greater symmetry.

My quick observation is that it makes the faces more symmetrical, gives a slight smile, and gives fairer skin.

Posted by: bob montgomery at Feb 26, 2007 4:29:56 PM

There's a few things going on, there:

The first thing you notice is that the middle woman is frowning in the source picture and has been modified to be neutral or slightly smiling in the destination picture.

They also changed the middle picture's eyes -- I think they're slightly bigger, but, amusingly, you can particularly notice longer eyelashes (compare her right eye's upper lashes).

It looks to me like they've stretched all the faces out a bit, or perhaps just given them higher foreheads -- I find this particularly noticeable for the left-most women and the left and middle men.

As someone above pointed out, they've increased symmetry (this has long been said to be an indicator of attractiveness). To see this, check out the left woman: in the source picture, the eyebrow on the right side of the photo (her left) is much higher than the other, and in fact the eye itself appears to be a little higher (may just be how she's holding her eyelids). Neither of these are true in the modified picture.

The guys all look like their heads are a little wider in the modified pictures.

I think that maybe the most interesting change is to the right-side guy's mouth. It's considerably more open in the source picture than in the modified one, but I can't figure out exactly what they did. His lips don't seem any fuller, so it's not that they're obscuring the opening.

Posted by: Michael B Sullivan at Feb 26, 2007 4:30:39 PM

anonymous,

But I think for at least a few the top photos are prettier. I don't think symmetry is always beautiful - its often bland. For example, the freckly girl looks better in the top photo where she has some character. In the bottom photo she looks washed out and like she bit her lip and made it puffy. For the guys I can hardly see any difference except they look like their IQs may have dropped a few points in the bottom photos for some reason - like they were given a blank stare (the first two, the third one looks less symmetrical in the bottom photo).

But I have never been very good at faces.

Posted by: liberty at Feb 26, 2007 4:37:09 PM

oh, i actually meant the left-side freckly girl, not the one on the right, but I don't like what they did to the one on the right either with that big forehead.

Posted by: liberty at Feb 26, 2007 4:41:44 PM

liberty: I'm not disagreeing with you, just pointing out what the software is supposed to do. I could see this being used e.g. in advertising, where perhaps you don't want people being distracted by a freckly face when they should focus on the product.

Posted by: anonymous at Feb 26, 2007 4:49:15 PM

Everyone comments on the women but the men actually look worse..

Posted by: edwardseco at Feb 26, 2007 5:50:44 PM

I wonder what'd happen if you run a photo through the process thrity or forty times. Would photos of different people converge to the same look?

Posted by: Hei Lun Chan at Feb 26, 2007 7:35:46 PM

Hei Lun Chan: if you read the paper, it's quite likely that the process would get stuck at a local maximum - the algorithm is designed to "beautify" a face with a minimum of distortion, so it does not rely on a single standard.

Posted by: anonymous at Feb 26, 2007 7:52:58 PM

It's instructive that the woman on the right had her nose widened, when it is generally considered effective to narrow the nose. Just look at Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, and Jennifer Aniston, among dozens of others in Hollywood.

Though technically, that's just a programming bug.

Posted by: Flynn at Feb 26, 2007 11:36:59 PM

If you could get glasses that would do this for all the people you see, would you want to wear them? What about just when you look in the mirror?

Posted by: Robert Sperry at Feb 27, 2007 4:03:57 AM

Run the old Michael Jackson through the program, see if the new one comes out.

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