CAN'T take a decent photo? Never fear. A smartphone app that uses music to help you frame the perfect shot should do the trick.
Due to be launched in February, LightSounds was developed by Jose san Pedro at the Barcelona research lab of Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica. It plays sad music when you frame a photo badly but shifts to a happier melody when you adjust to get it just right. San Pedro chose to guide the framing using musical output so as to help visually impaired users as well as amateur snappers.
The app recognises what makes a good photo in two ways. First, it was programmed with the photographer's . Then an AI algorithm analysed 100,000 photos that users of photo sites had voted as being high quality to work out the elements that made a good photo, such as exposure and composition. This was converted into aesthetic rules for the app.
When a picture is badly framed an electronically generated tune plays in a minor scale to encourage users to reframe, gradually moving up in pitch until a major scale is reached, indicating that the photo is framed correctly. When faces are in shot, more harmonies are added to the melody. San Pedro presented the app at a multimedia conference in Barcelona last month.
"The minor scale is melancholic and gloomy but the major scale evokes happiness and joy – and that's emphasised by the pitch changing from low to high," san Pedro says.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Let sweet music help you frame the perfect snap"
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