Abstract
Non-Photorealistic Rendering is now an established discipline, yet the question of how to evaluate ‘artistic’ NPR output is often raised. The question is most acute when the NPR algorithms are fully automatic, because then the output has no human involvement other than authorship of code. This paper addresses the question how can we assess the value of automatically produced NPR that has no purpose other than to be art? We doubt there is any single objective answer to this important question. We argue that experiments are at best difficult to design, and even the Turing test is of limited value because we are not asking whether a piece has been produced by a human but whether it possesses artistic merit regardless of its source. We conclude by suggesting that to assess progress in NPR, one must adopt an art historical perspective and appreciate it both for itself in its own terms, and within a wider cultural context.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Agrawala, M., Zorin, D., Munzner, T.: Artistic multiprojection rendering. In: Peroche, B., Rushmeier, H.E. (eds.) Proceedings of the Eurographics Workshop on Rendering 2000, Brno, Czech Republic, June 2000, pp. 125–136. Springer, Berlin (2000). doi:10.1145/647652.732127
Arnhiem, R.: Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye, 2nd edn. University of California Press, Berkeley (1974)
Bangham, J.A., Gibson, S.E., Harvey, R.: The art of scale-space. In: British Machine Vision Conference (2003)
Baxter, W., Wendt, J., Lin, M.C.: IMPaSTo: a realistic, interactive model for paint. In: Hertzmann, A., Kaplan, C. (eds.) Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering (NPAR 2004), pp. 45–56 (2004). doi:10.1145/987657.987665
Birkoff, G.: Aesthetic Measure. Harvard University Press, Harvard (1933)
Boden, M.: The Turing test and artistic creativity. Kybernetes 39(3), 409–413 (2010)
Breslav, S., Szerszen, K., Markosian, L., Barla, P., Thollot, J.: Dynamic 2D patterns for shading 3D scenes. ACM Trans. Graph. 26(3), 20 (2007). doi:10.1145/1275808.1276402
Brooks, S.: Mixed media painting and portraiture. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 13(5), 1041–10,540 (2007). doi:10.1109/TVCG.2007.1025
Burton, G.J., Moorhead, I.R.: Color and spatial structure in natural scenes. Appl. Opt. 26(1), 157 (1987). doi:10.1364/AO.26.000157
Coleman, P., Singh, K.R.: Rendering your animation nonlinearly projected. In: Hertzmann, A., Kaplan, C. (eds.) Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering (NPAR 2004), Annecy, pp. 129–138. ACM, New York (2004). doi:10.1145/987657.987678
Collomosse, J.P., Hall, P.M.: Painterly rendering using image salience. In: EGUK ’02: Proceedings of the 20th UK Conference on Eurographics, p. 122. IEEE Comput. Soc., Los Alamitos (2002)
Collomosse, J.P., Hall, P.M.: Cubist style rendering from photographs. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 4(9), 443–453 (2003). doi:10.1109/TVCG.2003.1260739
Collomosse, J.P., Hall, P.M.: Genetic paint: a search for salient paintings. In: Proceedings of EvoMUSART (LNCS). Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3449, pp. 437–447. Springer, Berlin (2005). doi:10.1007/978-3-540-32003-6_44
Collomosse, J.P., Rowntree, D., Hall, P.M.: Video analysis for cartoon-style special effects. In: Proceedings 14th British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC), vol. 2, pp. 749–758 (2003)
Collomosse, J.P., Rowntree, D., Hall, P.M.: Stroke surfaces: temporally coherent non-photorealistic animations from video. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 11(5), 540–549 (2005). doi:10.1109/TVCG.2005.85
Curtis, C.J., Anderson, S.E., Seims, J.E., Fleischer, K.W., Salesin, D.H.: Computer-generated watercolor. In: Whitted, T. (ed.) Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH, vol. 97, pp. 421–430 (1997). doi:10.1145/258734.258896
DeCarlo, D., Santella, A.: Stylization and abstraction of photographs. ACM Trans. Graph. 21(3), 769–776 (2002). doi:10.1145/566654.566650
Deussen, O., Strothotte, T.: Computer-generated pen-and-ink illustration of trees. In: Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH 2000, New Orleans, LA, July 23–28, 2000, pp. 23–28 (2000). doi:10.1145/344779.344792
DiPaola, S.: Painterly rendered portraits from photographs using a knowledge-based approach. Proc. SPIE 6492, 33–43 (2007). doi:10.1117/12.706594
Durand, F.: An invitation to discuss computer depiction. In: Finkelstein, A. (ed.) Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering (NPAR 2002), pp. 111–124. ACM, New York (2002). doi:10.1145/508530.508550
Elber, G., Wolberg, G.: Rendering traditional mosaics. Vis. Comput. 19(1), 67–78 (2003). doi:10.1007/s00371-002-0175-x
Fernie, E.: Art History and Its Methods: A Critical Anthology. Phaidon, Oxford (2011)
Ferwerda, J.A.: Three varieties of realism in computer graphics. In: Rogowitz, B.E., Pappas, T.N. (eds.) Proceedings of Human Vision and Electronic Imaging VIII, Santa Clara, California, USA, January 21, 2003. SPIE Proceedings Series, vol. 5007, pp. 290–297. SPIE/IS&T, Springfield (2003). doi:10.1117/12.473899
Field, D.: Relations between the statistics of natural images and the response profiles of cortical cells. J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 4, 2379–2394 (1987)
Field, D.: What is the goal of sensory coding? Neural Comput. 6, 559–601 (1994)
Filonik, D., Baur, D.: Measuring aesthetics for information visualization. In: International Conference on Information Visualization, pp. 579–584 (2009)
Frazor, R., Geisler, W.: Local luminance contrast in natural images. Vis. Res. 46, 1585–1598 (2006)
Gombrich, E.: Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of the Pictorial Representation. Phaidon, Oxford (1983)
Gombrich, E.: The Story of Art. Phaidon, Oxford (1995)
Gombrich, E.H.: The claims of excellence. In: Gombrich, E. (ed.) Reflections on the History of Art, pp. 179–185. Phaidon, Oxford (1987)
Graham, D., Field, D.: Statistical regularities of art image and natural scenes: spectra, sparseness and nonlinearities. Spat. Vis. 21, 149–164 (2007)
Graham, D., Field, D.: Variations in intensity statistics for representational and abstract art from the Eastern and Western hemispheres. Perception 37, 1341–1352 (2008)
Granger, G.: Aesthetic measure applied to color harmony: an experimental test. J. Gen. Psychol. 52(2), 205–212 (1955)
Haeberli, P.E.: Paint by numbers: abstract image representations. Comput. Graph. 24(4) 207–214 (1990)
Hall, P.M., Collomosse, J.P., Song, Y.Z., Shen, P., Li, C.: RTcams: a new perspective on nonphotorealistic rendering from photographs. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 13(5), 966–979 (2007). doi:10.1109/TVCG.2007.1047
Hanrahan, P., Haeberli, P.: Direct WYSIWYG painting and texturing on 3D shapes. Comput. Graph. 24(3), 215–223 (1990). doi:10.1145/97880.97903
Hertzmann, A.: Painterly rendering with curved brush strokes of multiple sizes. In: Cohen, M. (ed.) SIGGRAPH ’98: Proceedings of the 25th Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, pp. 453–460. ACM/ACM SIGGRAPH, New York (1998). doi:10.1145/280814.280951
Hertzmann, A.: Non-photorealistic rendering and the science of art. In: Collomosse, J., McGuire, M. (eds.) Proceedings of the Eighth International Symposium on Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering (NPAR 2010), Annecy, France, June 7–10, 2010, pp. 147–157. ACM, New York (2010). doi:10.1145/1809939.1809957
Hockney, D.: Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters. Thames and Hudson, London (2001)
Hsiao, S.W., Chiu, F.Y., Hsu, H.Y.: A computer-assisted colour selection system based on aesthetic measure for colour harmony and fuzzy logic theory. Color Res. Appl. 33, 411–423 (2008)
Huang, H., Zhang, L., Zhang, H.C.: Arcimboldo-like collage using internet images. ACM Trans. Graph. 30(6), 155 (2011). doi:10.1145/2070781.2024189
Hyman, J.: The Objective Eye: Color, Form, and Reality in the Theory of Art. University of Chicago, Chicago (2006)
Itti, L., Koch, C., Niebur, E.: A model of saliency based visual attention for rapid scene analysis. IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell. 20(11), 1254–1259 (1998)
Jones, B.: Computer imagery: imitation and representation of realities. Leonardo. Supplemental Issue 31–38 (1989)
Judd, T., Ehinger, K., Durand, F., Torralba, A.: Learning to predict where humans look. In: IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV) (2009)
Kreczkowska, A., El-Hage, J., Colton, S., Clark, S.: Automated collage generation with intent. In: International Joint Conference on Computational Creativity (2010)
Kyprianidis, J.E., Kang, H.: Image and video abstraction by coherence-enhancing filtering. Comput. Graph. Forum 30(2), 593–602 (2011)
Lee, J.: Physically-based modeling of brush painting. In: Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, pp. 1571–1756 (1997)
Lehmann, A.: Taking the lid off the Utah teapot. Towards a material analysis of computer graphics. Z. Medien Kult.-forsch. 1, 157–172 (2012)
Leister, W.: Computer generated copper plates. Comput. Graph. Forum 13(1), 69–77 (1994). doi:10.1111/1467-8659.1310069
Litwinowicz, P.: Processing images and video for an impressionist effect. In: Whitted, T. (ed.) Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH 97, Los Angeles, CA, August 3–8, 1997, pp. 407–414. ACM, New York (1997). doi:10.1145/258734.258893
Manovich, L.: Image future. Animation 1(1), 25–44 (2006)
Markosian, L., Kowalski, M.A., Trychin, S.J., Bourdev, L.D., Goldstein, D., Hughes, J.F.: Real-time nonphotorealistic rendering. In: Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH 97, pp. 415–420 (1997). doi:10.1145/258734.258894
Martin, D.R., Fowlkes, C.C., Malik, J.: Learning to detect natural image boundaries using local brightness, color, and texture cues. IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell. 26(5), 530–549 (2004). doi:10.1109/TPAMI.2004.1273918
Moon, P., Spencer, D.E.: Aesthetic measure applied to color harmony. J. Opt. Soc. Am. 34(4), 234–242 (1944)
Mould, D.: A stained glass image filter. In: Eurographics Symposium on Rendering: 14th Eurographics Workshop on Rendering, pp. 20–25 (2003)
Ngo, D.C.L., Samsudin, A., Abdullah, R.: Aesthetic measures for assessing graphic screens. J. Inf. Sci. Eng. 16(1), 97–116 (2000)
Orzan, A., Bousseau, A., Barla, P., Thollot, J.: Structure-preserving manipulation of photographs. In: Agrawala, M., Deussen, O. (eds.) NPAR ’07: Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Non-photorealistic Animation and Rendering, pp. 103–110. ACM, New York (2007). doi:10.1145/1274871.1274888
Ostromoukhov, V.: Digital facial engraving. In: Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH 99, Los Angeles, CA, August 8–13, 1999, pp. 417–424 (1999). doi:10.1145/311535.311604
Paris, S., Hasinoff, S.W., Kautz, J.: Local Laplacian filters: edge-aware image processing with a Laplacian pyramid. ACM Trans. Graph. 30(4), 68 (2011). doi:10.1145/2010324.1964963
Pease, A., Colton, S.: On impact and evaluation in computational creativity: a discussion of the Turing test and an alternative proposal. In: AISB Symposium on AI and Philosophy (2011)
Rusinkiewicz, S., Cole, F., DeCarlo, D., Finkelstein, A.: Line drawings from 3D models. In: ACM SIGGRAPH 2008 Classes, vol. 39, pp. 1–356 (2008). doi:10.1145/1401132.1401188
Saito, T., Takahashi, T.: Comprehensible rendering of 3-D shapes. Comput. Graph. 24(3), 197–206 (1990). doi:10.1145/97880.97901
Salesin, D.: Non-photorealistic animation and rendering: 7 grand challenges. In: Keynote talk at NPAR (2002)
Santella, A., DeCarlo, D.: Visual interest and NPR: an evaluation and manifesto. In: Hertzmann, A., Kaplan, C. (eds.) Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering (NPAR 2004), Annecy, France, June 7–9, 2004, pp. 71–78. ACM, New York (2004). doi:10.1145/987657.987669
Schelske, A.: Zur Sozialität des nicht-fotorealistischen Renderings. Eine zu kurze, soziologische Skizze für zeitgenössische Bildmaschinen. Image: J. Interdiscip. Image Sci. 6, 47–58 (2007)
Schirra, J.R.J., Scholz, M.: Abstraction versus realism: not the real question. In: Strothotte, T., Deussen, O. (eds.) Computer Visualization—Graphics, Abstraction, and Interactivity, pp. 379–401. Springer, Berlin (1998)
Schwarz, M., Isenberg, T., Mason, K., Carpendale, S.: Modeling with rendering primitives: an interactive non-photorealistic canvas. In: Proc. NPAR, pp. 15–22 (2007). doi:10.1145/1274871.1274874
Smith, P.: Pictorial grammar: Chomsky, John Willats, and the rules of representation. Art Hist. 562–593 (2011)
Song, Y., Hall, P., Rosin, P.L., Collomosse, J.: Arty shapes. In: Proc. Comp. Aesthetics, pp. 65–73 (2008)
Sousa, M.C., Buchanan, J.W.: Computer-generated graphite pencil rendering of 3D polygonal models. Comput. Graph. Forum 18(3), 195–207 (1999). doi:10.1111/1467-8659.00340
Strassmann, S.H.: Hairy brushes. Comput. Graph. 20(4), 225–232 (1986). doi:10.1145/15922.15911
Strothotte, T., Schlechtweg, S.: Non-Photorealistic Computer Graphics: Modeling, Rendering, and Animation. Morgan Kaufmann, San Mateo (2002)
Tauber, A.: The Elusive Synthesis Aesthetics and Science. Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht (1996)
Tolhurst, D., Tadmor, Y., Chao, T.: The amplitude spectra of natural images. Ophthalmic Physiol. Opt. 12, 229–232 (1992)
Treavett, S.M.F., Chen, M.: Statistical techniques for the automatic generation of non-photorealistic images. In: Proceedings of the 15th Eurographics UK Conference (1997)
Tresset, P., Leymarie, F.: Generative portrait sketching. In: Proceedings of VSMM (2005)
Umenhoffer, T., Szécsi, L., Szirmay-Kalos, L.: Hatching for motion picture production. Comput. Graph. Forum 30(2), 533–542 (2011)
Verlaek, P.: Non-photorealistic rendering as epistemic images. In: Workshop on Abstract Images in Art and Science (2009)
Wang, J., Xu, Y., Shum, H.Y., Cohen, M.F.: Video tooning. ACM Trans. Graph. 23(3), 574–583 (2004). doi:10.1145/1015706.1015763
Wen, F., Luan, Q., Liang, L., Xu, Y.Q., Shum, H.Y.: Color sketch generation. In: DeCarlo, D., Markosian, L. (eds.) Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering (NPAR 2006), Annecy, France, June 5–7, 2006, pp. 47–54. ACM, New York (2006). doi:10.1145/1124728.1124737
Wiggins, G.: A preliminary framework for description, analysis and comparison of creative systems. Knowl.-Based Syst. 19(7), 449–458 (2006)
Willats, J.: Art and Representation: New Principles in the Analysis of Pictures. Princeton University Press, Princeton (1997)
Yu, J., McMillan, L.: A framework for multiperspective rendering. In: Keller, A., Jensen, H.W. (eds.) Rendering Techniques 2004, Proceedings of Eurographics Symposium on Rendering 2004, pp. 61–68. Eurographics Association, Annecy (2004)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag London
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hall, P., Lehmann, AS. (2013). Don’t Measure—Appreciate! NPR Seen Through the Prism of Art History. In: Rosin, P., Collomosse, J. (eds) Image and Video-Based Artistic Stylisation. Computational Imaging and Vision, vol 42. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-4519-6_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-4519-6_16
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-4471-4518-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-4519-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)