Opinion Needed: Software that detects bad photos and pick the best of similar ones

<p>I'm considering writing a Windows application that can detect:<br /><br />- underexposed photos<br />- overexposed photos<br />- shaken photos<br />- blurred out of focus photos<br />- and pick the best (clearest) of a set of similar/duplicate photos<br /><br />Is this something you would use? How much would you be willing to pay for something like this?<br /><br />What features would you like to see?</p>

Personally, used as an off-line, after-the-fact analysis tool, I have no need for this. I wouldn't use it if it were given to me

free. However, I could image that if it were tightly written, low level code for some of the microcontrollers used in cameras, there

might be some interest from mfgrs of consumer level cameras.

 

Tom M

<p>It this isn't a joke, Fool's Day was April 1 ;)</p>

<p>Lightroom lets you look at all photos in a group side-by-side. You can mark your choices, make adjustments, and synchronize other images to those adjustments. You can erase, hide, or simply ignore those you reject. I erase with great care. More times than I can count a photo that didn't appeal to me at first proves useful in the future.</p>

<p>How would you distinguish between:</p>

<p>Pictures of average subjects which are underexposed, and pictures of dark subjects which are correctly exposed?</p>

<p>Pictures of average subjects which are overexposed, and pictures of light subjects which are correctly exposed?</p>

<p>Pictures where there is deliberate motion blur from panning a moving subject?</p>

<p>Pictures where much of the scene is deliberately out of focus to add emphasis to the subject?</p>

<p>Just being devil's advocate I suppose, but good luck with it.</p>

<p>I'd be surprised if a computer could make those distinctions.</p>

<p>Not much use for me. I often break barriers (adjust to whatevah)...so I'd have to fight the app on top of everything else.</p>

<p>Les</p>

<p>Not much use I'm afraid but contrary to some of the above mentioned comments I'm very curious about this. Perhaps a Lightroom plugin that automatically sets the score for the pictures?<br>

I don't think it is impossible to write such an application, I think I have seen this before, I don't recall whether it was a suggestion for a program or if it was already under development. </p>

To answer your questions: No. Nothing. None.

<p>Ok, thanks everyone, looks like it's pretty much unanimous that there's no need for it.</p>

Cameras like the Nikon 1 System already offer

this for people who are most likely to want this

type of feature.

 

It takes a burst at up to 30 fps and selects the

"best" five, based on detection of minimum blur,

face recognition, exposure, etc.

 

It works well enough that I sometimes use it for

snaps through the window while traveling, quick

moving kids and pets, and casual candid photos of

groups of people. I don't often worry that I

might have gotten better results shooting at 10-

30 fps and manually choosing my own few frames.

 

So, sure, there might be a market for this. But

it's already covered by some excellent snapshot

cameras.

 

And for fun novelties even the free software that

couples Picasa with Google+ free photo storage

online can use face recognition and other factors

to combine photos into auto generated animated

GIFs.

 

Also, ask the same question elsewhere - say, parents who mostly use smartphones to photograph their kids - and you'll get very different and probably more positive and receptive replies. As smartphones improve in speed, resolution, etc., users are more likely to appreciate some auto selection features in a good app. As good as the Nikon 1 System is, I don't see it replacing smartphones among my family and friends who might have been the target demographic.

<p>I don't know if I'd be willing to buy it. - TBH: I am quite the cheapskate when it comes to software purchases especially considering how much decent stuff can be had for free or comes in some camera box.<br>

A feature I'd like would be auto subfoldering the detected keepers / highlights. And / or tossing similar color tints / lightings together. - It would have to do that before RAW conversion, to add some ease / success to batch converting on slow machines. <br>

Another appreciatable feature would be sub foldering deppendant on the camera shake / motion blurr. - I guess some stuff too bad for posters might still be good enough for the internet or as 4x6" print.<br>

I'm not sure how everybody else is shooting. My elderly cameras seem to shine in a RAW workflow. Also most I have lacks the firepower (burst length, writing speed and also enough FPS to risk bracketing everything and the kitchensink like crazy) to allow a mercyless spray & pray approach that would benefit a lot from your software.- Here I end tweaking RAWs to get a somewhat sloppy exposure fixed and do my weeding out at home on a powerful machine by hand.<br>

For the cellphone crowd it might be nice to have an option to boil down the images kept on the device when it is hooked to a computer, maybe even with an assistant presetable to something like 36 kids and 24 cat pictures, sincde these are usually kept on the phone to show them around. - But I know little about these devices & their handling.<br>

I think Lex is right when he assumes there might be a different crowd appreciating your software.</p>

<p>Naveed, with all due respect, such a device is altogether unnecessary. Sorting bad photos from good ones is a photographer's job.</p>

<p>Perhaps Google has already done what you are looking for : Using Android 5.1 on the Nexus 6, google backs up (an option you turn on) your pictures and automatically selects enhances, and frames some images as awesome. And, you can select images for auto enhancement and framing plus other features. Their results appear similar to Nik Plug in results with Photo Shop which I have. And, it is then your choice to enhance what they provide.</p>

<p>There is research going on in this area. An interesting paper from a few years ago: "Aesthetics and Emotions in Images, a computational perspective" (IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing) can be found <a href="http://infolab.stanford.edu/~wangz/project/imsearch/Aesthetics/SPM11/joshi.pdf">here</a>. However, I think that the audience for an application like that is mainly non-photographers. In most photography forums you will get negative answers telling you the tool is not required<br /><br /><br /></p>

<p>Getting rid of the objectively worst pictures in a group is the work of seconds . The hardest part is choosing between technically similar photographs where the compositions, angles of view , lighting, cloud patterns, expressions etc are different, not necessarily better or worse, and opinions are subjective so you might well choose differently from me.. If I read it right your idea does the part of the job that's easy, and will fail on the difficult bit. So no thanks.</p>

<p>It might have some use, but it would have to be used with care. A typical example is that the program would need to know what part of the picture needs to be in "best focus" as this is not always obvious. The program would need (obviously) to be able to toggle on and off your various criteria. I think there are not many photogs who would leave it to a machine to decide the overall "best" however. But I think it could have some use for selecting swiftly between a set of similar images.</p>

<p>The one thing I can think of is duplicate images; I believe there's software that can sort those out, present them to you. Other than that I wouldn't be interested, don't think it's practical.</p>

<p>To add to John's list, how would you distinguish ideal exposure from raw data? Or proper exposure from raw, improperly rendered?</p>

<p>I'd be afraid it would toss ALL of my pictures.</p>

<p>Anyhow, it is an interesting philosophical speculation as to whether "Skynet" is going to happen soon, or whether it has already happened (Wolfram Alpha+Siri).</p>

<p>Very valid points, and it would be near impossible to detect over and under exposure when the picture is intentionally bright or dark.</p>

<p>Photoshop Elements 8 has Smart Tags which, which coupled with Auto Analyzer, does what you want with the exception of "pick the best". </p>

<p> </p>

<p>Certainly I would not buy such a software but if you do that it's better just to put in in the camera so the camera won't take bad shots to begin with. </p>

<p>I see the value for a BIG event photography type companies. Those operation shoot up to thousands of photos during a big event. That can be a valuable tool for them. Beyond that, I don't think it's all that desirable. It'll work if you market it to the right audience. Good luck with your business endeavor ... we need more independent entrepreneurs.</p>

 

<p>To add to my response that although I would not buy such a product that doesn't mean nobody will? In fact most products I hate are selling very well. So really good luck and you do have potential. The software won't really work but it's possible to have a lot of people using it. </p>

<p>Naveed, I think you will find it very difficult to select the subjects in photos and discriminate between the areas in photo that are blurred intentionally and the cases where the blurring is an accident. Just because the image contains SOMETHING that's sharp doesn't mean it's not the background, and the subject is mush.</p>

<p>More useful would be a tool that would give a Relative Edge Response numeric score to a selectable slanted edge in an image. Imatest does this, but not everyone wants to pay $300 for even the cheapest version.</p>