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The Beautification Engine

Alex •


Photo: Lars Klove for The New York Times / Manipulation by Tommer Leyvand

Tommer Leyvand and colleagues have created a "beautification engine," a software program that uses a mathematical formula to alter a person's face into what theoretically is the more "beautiful" version, while retaining "unmistakable similarity" to the original:

Studies have shown that there is surprising agreement about what makes a face attractive. Symmetry is at the core, along with youthfulness; clarity or smoothness of skin; and vivid color, say, in the eyes and hair. There is little dissent among people of different cultures, ethnicities, races, ages and gender.

Yet, like the many other attempts to use objective principles or even mathematical formulas to define beauty, this software program raises what psychologists, philosophers and feminists say are complex, even disturbing, questions about the perception of beauty and a beauty ideal.

To what extent is beauty quantifiable? Does a supposedly scientific definition merely reflect the ideal of the moment, built from the images of pop culture and the news media?

Link


Comments (29)

Newest 5
Newest 5 Comments

Well, I know for one thing this will make a lot of plastic surgeons a whole lot richer when they use this to convince a client who came in to fix a scar to fix the whole face.
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Has anyone realised that if symmetry is actually key to beauty, you could take either half of any face image and reflect it, and you would have a beautiful face? This is obviously not the case, and even the most beautiful face put through this procedure gives quite a different result for each side, hence asymmetry. Obviously, the perception of symmetry is an integral part of a beautiful face, but only if the proportions of the features to each other are correct. A beautiful face is close to symmetrical, but a symmetrical face is not necessariy beautiful. If you look on a popular search engine for "beauty mask" you will find reference to a mask for measuring beauty based on the golden ratio which is the basis for all natural beauty as found in trees, flowers, sea shells etc. This is a far more useful and accurate measuring stick than symmetry alone could ever possibly be. Sorry for the long winded response but this attempt to oversimplify the attributes of facial beauty by talking simply about symmetry really annoys me. It's like saying a dog has four legs, therefore if it has four legs, it must be a dog!??
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eh? On the ones in the link I thought they looked mostly the same, but in the one shown here, I think she looks MUCH better in the after picture. Not sure what everyone saying she looked better in the before are talking about...
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Christine, you're only saying that because, like most of the other people here, you don't want to appear shallow. You'd like to think that you're above the notions of beauty that society drums into you. And yet, you still try and improve yourself, you diet, wear high heels and makeup, shave your legs, pluck your eyebrows, and do the myriad other things to make yourself more attractive.
What's the new black this season? Do I look fat in this?
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MightyCow - true, the altered images may have looked worse due to limitations in image alteration (imperfect CGI, if you will), but the symmetry and proportions improved in most cases.

Then again, I thought the before picture posted here looked just as fake as the after picture, so what do I know?
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An update after actually visiting the site: Only one person looked better afterwards than before, and it was only because her double chin was slimmed down. This could be accomplished just by losing weight. Every other person looked quite a bit better before.
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These pics remind me of a plastic surgeon who was a guest on The View a few days ago. He'd had so much botox and filler that he looked incredibly scary - I'd cast him in a Halloween thriller in a heartbeat.

The unaltered pictures all looked either better than or the same as the altered ones, IMO.
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The only thing it really seemed to do was make the faces look much slimmer and longer. Not earth-shattering.

But if you can't see the improvement in this woman's picture here, you're in denial.
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Neat concept. Looking at most of the before/after pictures was like looking at those "spot 6 differences" comics, though. Very, very subtle for most of them. The woman pictured above was the most dramatically changed, and I'd say that the after is indeed an improvement.
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I thought the left image was the beautified version. (Left = wow, Right = meh)

Actually, studies show that we find faces that are just slightly off of "perfect" symmetry to be the most beautiful. Completely "perfect" symmetry seems a little boring and forgettable to us... (probably something to do with wanting enough symmetry to indicate health, with a little variation to indicate genetic variation)
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I don't know about the rest of you all, but for the most part it seems like the "beautified" faces just mooshed the features closer to the center of the face and lengthened the distances between the nose and mouth and that the result kind of looked like their faces had been squashed in a vise while leaving the head intact, and that the originals looked a hell of a lot better. All the faces seemed too small and Michael Cera ended up looking like some freakish cave troll with tiny eyeballs.
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I must be in denial then as I find the before pic far more attractive than the after.

I like the peculiarities that make faces much more than the blandly perfect.

Humans respond to symmettry not Barbie.

If there is symmetry it is attractive irrespective.

The media have decided that thin is most attractive when it is actually the ratio of hip to waist that is most attractive regardless of weight.

I find this homogenisation of people sort of loathesome
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Oh for the love of...

This symmetry thing is utter bunkum. There is no such thing as a symmetrical face. This is a latter day version of Phrenology.

What kind of washed up, second rate hack "scientist" spends his life investigating "beauty" in any event?

One would think that there were more urgent questions facing the species...
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Nope the symmetry thing is true dermot.

And it is in no way like phrenology, which said that you could ascertain the character of a person from the lumps on their head.

The idea that people are attracted to symmetrical faces says nothing about the character of that face or draws any other meaning aside from it's level of ...symmetrery.
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And yes, I am very ordinary looking, but I have one thing you don't have, a charcoal etching of a Mississippi riverboat that belonged to my Grandmother. And there's no reason you should be expected to, beautiful. These boys are everso silly Mabel!
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I think you better lay off the mint juleps, Dorothy. Woman looks bug-eyed in that picture because her eyes are wide open, probably as a result of posing for the camera.
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You can argue about which version looks better, but in the end, I think this was just a monumental waste of time by whoever did it. I find it a little pathetic that there's still so much effort into these kinds of things.

How do people really benefit from this, when all is said in done? People get new ways to feel bad about themselves? Is this research for plastic surgeons? Another way to take your self-esteem and sell it back to you?
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Mr. Binky, I'd say it provides some insight into human psychology and culture, which can turn be extrapolated into hypotheses about what evolutionary cause made us this way.

For instance, a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7 for women has been considered the ideal proportion for thousands of years. For whatever reason, it confers the most health and presumably fertility of the various proportions. There's gotta be some underlying reason why different cultures at different times in history find it most appealing.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Christine, you're only saying that because, like most of the other people here, you don't want to appear shallow. You'd like to think that you're above the notions of beauty that society drums into you. And yet, you still try and improve yourself, you diet, wear high heels and makeup, shave your legs, pluck your eyebrows, and do the myriad other things to make yourself more attractive.
What's the new black this season? Do I look fat in this?
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
eh? On the ones in the link I thought they looked mostly the same, but in the one shown here, I think she looks MUCH better in the after picture. Not sure what everyone saying she looked better in the before are talking about...
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Has anyone realised that if symmetry is actually key to beauty, you could take either half of any face image and reflect it, and you would have a beautiful face? This is obviously not the case, and even the most beautiful face put through this procedure gives quite a different result for each side, hence asymmetry. Obviously, the perception of symmetry is an integral part of a beautiful face, but only if the proportions of the features to each other are correct. A beautiful face is close to symmetrical, but a symmetrical face is not necessariy beautiful. If you look on a popular search engine for "beauty mask" you will find reference to a mask for measuring beauty based on the golden ratio which is the basis for all natural beauty as found in trees, flowers, sea shells etc. This is a far more useful and accurate measuring stick than symmetry alone could ever possibly be. Sorry for the long winded response but this attempt to oversimplify the attributes of facial beauty by talking simply about symmetry really annoys me. It's like saying a dog has four legs, therefore if it has four legs, it must be a dog!??
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Well, I know for one thing this will make a lot of plastic surgeons a whole lot richer when they use this to convince a client who came in to fix a scar to fix the whole face.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
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