CeWe Challenge 2010: Automatic Theme Identification of Photo Sets for Digital Print Products

With the advent of digital photography, the number of photos taken has increased tremendously. While only recently, in the analogue days, a small number of films documented a 2-weeks holiday, we are nowadays taking and storing hundreds or even thousands of digital photos. As in the analogue days a common way of preserving memories or making them available to others are individual photo products like posters, calendars or photo books. Today also the processes of designing these products have become digital and thus many companies are offering digitally designed counterparts of the former analogue photoproducts. Popular examples are photo books like the CEWE PHOTOBOOK. In these books the digital photos are arranged over the pages of the book in different designs.

Concrete problem

When a user wants to create a CEWE PHOTOBOOK it can be designed with the help of a dedicated software application. This software first assists the user in selecting and laying out the photos from the selected on the pages and add titles and captions. The user may also design the individual page with regard to the number of images, their position, size, rotation and so on. A concept not only present in the CEWE PHOTOBOOK software is the use of different styles for different kinds of photo books. Such a style influences how photos are laid out on the pages, which backgrounds are chosen or which text font is used for headings and captions. In the CEWE PHOTOBOOK software about 100 styles are available to suit different user tastes and different types of photo books. These styles are defined and designed by skilled designers being experts in both general layout principles and understanding photo book user’s needs. However, albeit being a huge enhancement over pure manual layout, the user still has to manually select the style for his photo set out of a large and potentially overwhelming set of styles.

The challenge

In order to further assist the process of photo book design CEWE is seeking for ways simplify this style selection step. The CEWE PHOTOBOOK software today provides different styles for different events (such as party, holiday, chronicle, or family events), for different seasons (such as Christmas, summer, Easter) but also meeting design styles (classical, funky, cute, …). These styles are organized in different categories. The challenge CEWE wants to address is to support users selecting and assigning the right style to an individual photo set. The goal is, however, not necessarily to automatically determine the one and only perfect style, but rather to provide the user with a reasonable selection of styles he or she can choose from. This selection should fit the user’s preferences, the images in the set and the current structure of the photo book, i.e., the distribution of the photos over the single pages.

Data Set and Evaluation

For researchers interested in the described challenge CEWE COLOR will provide selected photo sets together with a list of suitable styles for each set. These list of styles covers the styles currently offered in the CEWE PHOTOBOOK application. This list of styles is organized in a taxonomy, which will also be provided upon request. The developed methods for matching photo sets to photo book styles should be evaluated on the provided photo sets. Please contact Sabine Thieme (Sabine.Thieme@cewecolor.de) for details.

About CeWe

CeWe Color is the Number One services partner for first-class trade brands on the European photographic market. CeWe supplies both stores and Internet retailers (e-commerce) with photographic products.