The role of image composition in image aesthetics

In this paper, we explore the role that image composition plays in image aesthetic appeal classification. We propose low-level image composition features that approximate traditional photography composition guidelines, such as simplicity and visual balance (e.g. golden mean, golden triangles). We then use these features to build an image aesthetics classifier that we test with a baseline dataset. Interestingly, our approach, that only takes into account image composition features, yields close to state-of-the-art image aesthetic-based classification accuracies, which highlights the importance of image composition in image aesthetic appeal assessment.