Graphics, Imaging, and Games Lab

Non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) has been used to produce stylized images, e.g., in a stippled or painted style. To evaluate NPR algorithms, similarity measurements used in image processing have been employed to assess the quality of rendered images. However, there is no standard objective measurement of stylization quality. In many cases, raw side-by-side comparisons are used to demonstrate improvements in aesthetic quality. This means of comparison often fails to be persuasive due to the small size of demonstrations and the subjective choice of images. We conducted a user study and examined responses of 30 subjects in order to determine two things: whether there exists a relationship between the structural quality and aesthetic quality of non-colored non-photorealistic images; and whether the choice of images matters for side-by-side comparisons.

 Our study revealed a statistically significant correlation between the aesthetic and structure ratings given by participants: increases in structural rating coincided with increases in aesthetic rating. Second, participants' ratings of structure and aesthetic were influenced by image content: that is, choice of input images influenced the results of side-by-side comparisons.