Abstract
We introduce a new problem of automatic photo composition, and present an effective technique for finding good views within a panoramic scene. Instead of applying heuristic rules of photo composition, we propose to imitate good composition presented in the artworks of professional photographers. Our approach tries to model the composition styles of professional photographs by analyzing the structural features and the layout of visual saliency. The task of finding good photo composition through a viewfinder is formulated as a search problem, and we present a stochastic search algorithm to look for good viewing configurations and to choose suitable reference images from the collection of masterpiece photographs. Given any initial location in the panoramic scene, our algorithm is able to suggest a better view that would often yield professional-like photo composition. ©2009 IEEE.