Abstract
Art images and natural scenes have in common that their radially averaged (1D) Fourier spectral power falls according to a power-law with increasing spatial frequency (1/f2 characteristics), which implies that the power spectra have scale-invariant properties. In the present study, we show that other categories of man-made images, cartoons and graphic novels (comics and mangas), have similar properties. Further on, we extend our investigations to 2D power spectra. In order to determine whether the Fourier power spectra of man-made images differed from those of other categories of images (photographs of natural scenes, objects, faces and plants and scientific illustrations), we analyzed their 2D power spectra by principal component analysis. Results indicated that the first fifteen principal components allowed a partial separation of the different image categories. The differences between the image categories were studied in more detail by analyzing whether the mean power and the slope of the power gradients from low to high spatial frequencies varied across orientations in the power spectra. Mean power was generally higher in cardinal orientations both in real-world photographs and artworks, with no systematic difference between the two types of images. However, the slope of the power gradients showed a lower degree of mean variability across spectral orientations (i.e., more isotropy) in art images, cartoons and graphic novels than in photographs of comparable subject matters. Taken together, these results indicate that art images, cartoons and graphic novels possess relatively uniform 1/f2 characteristics across all orientations. In conclusion, the man-made stimuli studied, which were presumably produced to evoke pleasant and/or enjoyable visual perception in human observers, form a subset of all images and share statistical properties in their Fourier power spectra. Whether these properties are necessary or sufficient to induce aesthetic perception remains to be investigated.
Highlights
The basis of aesthetic judgment remains elusive
Previous studies have shown that the radially averaged spectral amplitudes of monochrome art images fall roughly according to a power-law with increasing spatial frequency (1/f2 characteristics, see Introduction)
Mean slope values for the three image categories are given in Table 1 and demonstrate that, like visual art and natural scenes, all three image categories possess 1/f2 characteristics in their power spectra
Summary
Properties that can be expressed in scientific or mathematical terms and are common and unique to most (or possibly all) aesthetic images, including visual art, have yet to be identified. It is still controversial whether such universal criteria for aesthetic judgment exist at all. Because the processing of information in the human visual system is efficiently adapted to viewing natural scenes [20,21,22,23], it has been argued that artists use 1/f2 characteristics in their artworks because these properties confer inherent aesthetic value [24] or are a corollary of aesthetic features in artworks [9]
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