Remember Cher's amazing outfit-matching computer program in the film Clueless? It might just have become a reality...
Thanks to researchers at the University of Toronto, there's now a new tool to improve your Instagram photos. Starting with your outfit, of course.
They worked out how to use an algorithm to predict how fashionable a person looks in an Instagram post, and suggest subtle improvements the user can make to improve their style appeal.
As explained in the report provided by the Computer Vision Foundation, "People want to look good; business or casual, elegant or sporty, sexy but not slutty, and of course trendy, particularly so when putting their picture online."
The researchers mined data from chictopia.com, a social media website where users share photos of their outfits.
Using the site's 144,169 posts, the team was able to amass highly detailed statistics for each user, their photo and the fashion it features, along with the comments and response it received from the rest of the Chictopia community.
This Fashion144k Dataset, as it's called, revealed certain correlations and patterns between aspects of a post and the interest it generated, which was then used to create the fashionability-predicting algorithm.
Input a photo and the algorithm assesses "the type of outfit and garments, the type of user, the setting/scenery of the photograph, and fashionability of the user's photograph."
The code will then give detailed feedback including outfit recommendations, perfect locations to pose in, plus notes on how well it fits, the lighting and angle of the photo.
It can can even assess fashion trends around the world from the past six years.
"Such analysis is important for the users, as they can adapt to the trends in “real-time” as well as to the fashion industry, which can adapt their new designs based on the popularity of garment types," the researchers said.
Sounds perfect for designers and fashion-lovers alike!
(H/T: harpersbazaar.com)