We investigate the optimal aesthetic location and size of a single dominant salient region in a photographic image. Existing algorithms for photographic composition do not take full account of the spatial positioning or sizes of these salient regions. We present a set of experiments to assess aesthetic preferences, inspired by theories of centeredness, principal lines, and Rule-of-Thirds. Our experimental results show a clear preference for the salient region to be centered in the image and that there is a preferred size of non-salient border around this salient region. We thus propose a novel image cropping mechanism for images containing a single salient region to achieve the best aesthetic balance. Our results show that the Rule-of-Thirds guideline is not generally valid but also allow us to hypothesize in which situations it is useful and in which it is inappropriate.
History
Preferred citation
Hoh, W. K., Zhang, F. L. & Dodgson, N. A. (2023). Salient-Centeredness and Saliency Size in Computational Aesthetics. ACM Transactions on Applied Perception, 20(2), 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1145/3588317