Monday, December 19, 2016
In my last blog post, I mentioned possible artistic movements to use for my dataset. I have chosen works from the Hudson River Valley School of Art. I will be pulling images from reputable museum websites and making sure all images are of similar resolution and size. These artworks are similar in overall style, which should eliminate any bias toward certain artistic styles, but do vary in characteristics like color usage (sometimes dependent on the time of day that the work is portraying). Due to this apparent difference in color usage, the Photoshop Histograms will be useful as they show color distribution using the RGB scale, and it will be interesting to see if people prefer works that have more, for example, blues than reds.
Concerning the histograms that were shown in my last blog post, I would like to take some time to explain them. They are graphical representations of the pixel values within an image. For each histogram, the x-axis represents some value from 0 to 255 that corresponds to a brightness intensity (left to right is black to white). The y-axis shows the representation of that pixel value in the image (how much there is). Concerning the between the RGB channel and the individual Red, Green, and Blue channels, the RGB channel seems to sum the histograms for the individual channels. For the individual channels, the y-axis is similar to the RGB channel but the x-axis is a gradient from black to the saturated color (left to right). As far as analyzing contrast, the histograms themselves will not be enough. Qualitatively, looking at a the histograms and seeing that there a multiple peaks that are far apart on the x-axis is a logical sign of contrast within the work. However, quantitatively, programming will have to be used. This aspect of the project will be further investigated during winter break and the beginning of the Spring Semester.
Finally, I am excited to say that I will be doing this project under the support of the Brackenridge Fellowship next semester. I would like to thank Dr. Alison Langmead, Lily Brewer, and Dr. Douglas Ruff for all their help in preparing my application, as well as Dr. Peter Koehler and others in the Honors College for accepting my project.