A More Beautiful (Average) You

I posted a story a few months ago about a "Vanity Camera With Slimming Effect," that highlighted some simple image warping algorithms to make photo subjects appear slimmer without distorting the rest of the image too noticeably. Another recent post, "Easy on the Eyes, Easy on the Mind," discussed the fact that over large populations, it was the average facial features of the population as a whole that became the standard for beauty.

Well a quartet of Israeli scientists has taken these ideas a big step further to demonstrate an automatic beautification algorithm that will subtly adjust the spacing and symmetry of your facial features, i.e. ocular spacing, shape and aspect ratio of forehead, lip position and shape, and so on... in such a fashion as to make your image more "average" and thereby more appealing.

The results are astounding. Check out these screen shots of the tool in action, with some of the population database (from which the averages were computed) shown below, and the before and after positioning of the facial features called out on the warped grid. The before and after images tell the story.

Now check out the results in higher resolution:

I predict it won't be long before this is an automatic feature in most cameras.

See the authors' web site and their Siggraph brief for more details.