Photo Summary – The Best Pictures with a few Clicks

Whether professional or hobby photographer – these days, thanks to common image editing software, every shot can be edited with a few clicks only and designed individually. Unfortunately, photographers are often left alone when organizing their photo collection.

To create exciting albums and presentations or to find the best shots in a collection of several hundreds of photographs, until now every picture had to be clicked on and rated separately. “It is our ambition to ease this time consuming and tiring procedure for the user. Photo Summary automatically selects the most attractive shots. The user himself can decide whether the selection contains more or less, e. g. 100 or only 10, photographs and according to which criteria they are selected,” says Fraunhofer IDMT's Dr. Uwe Kühhirt.

The automated image selection works this way: The software uses special algorithms to extract visual attributes from the images. These attributes are then combined with the EXIF metadata stored within the shots. This is similar to the way a human user works when evaluating and organizing images. The software recognizes many different attributes, including technical quality, similarity of subjects or the presence of people. Whether an event is particularly important for the photographer is recognized by the software, if the same subject has been shot several times within a short period. Considering a photograph attractive is mainly due to its simplicity, coloring and composition. By using methods of machine learning, these criteria also decide which photographs are added to a collection. If the suggested selection does not comply with the photographers ideas, it can be manually modified or extended afterwards.

This technology is intended for developers of photo management and editing software as well as for camera manufacturers and developers in the photo finishing industry. Since August 2010, Photo Summary is used in the MAGIX Foto Manager 10 for image management.

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Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT in Ilmenau conducts applied research in the field of digital media and works on leading projects and topics in the field of audio visual applications. Besides sound solutions for home- and professional users (e.g. IOSONO® Wave Field Synthesis technology) software technologies for analysis and characterization of multimedia content as well as audio-visual applications for medical engineering are being developed. Furthermore interactive AV applications for entertainment and knowledge management and the design of architectures for digital online-distribution are in the institute’s research focus. The Fraunhofer IDMT realizes innovative scientific results through prototypes and applicable solutions which come up to customer and market requirements in close cooperation with partners in economy, culture and science. Since 2008, Fraunhofer IDMT has two new branch labs. The department Children’s Media, based in Erfurt, works on the development of innovative computer based program and edutainment formats for children and adolescents. The new project group Hearing, Speech and Audio Technology, based in Oldenburg, researches topics of audio system technology, concerning the fields of health, transportation, multimedia and telecommunication.