NY Times on "beautification software"

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Sarah Kershaw of the New York Times reports on research published at Siggraph about a computer program developed at Tel Aviv University that changes the geometry of faces in photographs to make them more beautiful. (Photo: Lars Klove for The New York Times, manipulation by Tommer Leyvand)

The photograph on the right was doctored by the "beautification engine" of a new computer program that uses a mathematical formula to alter the original form into a theoretically more attractive version, while maintaining what programmers call an "unmistakable similarity" to the original.

The software program, developed by computer scientists in Israel, is based on the responses of 68 men and women, age 25 to 40, from Israel and Germany, who viewed photographs of white male and female faces and picked the most attractive ones.

Scientists took the data and applied an algorithm involving 234 measurements between facial features, including the distances between lips and chin, the forehead and the eyes, or between the eyes.

The Sum of Your Facial Parts