Frequency Magnitude and Images of Texture Studies on Relationships to Human Preference

A relationship between spatial frequency magnitude and aesthetic preference for texture is established in this work. This paper examines the mean output of three frequency settings in terms of preference ratings for a bank of Gabor filters. Three studies were conducted and the correlations between aesthetic ratings and the mean output for the filter set to extract frequency content at the scale of 0.35 cycles/ pixel were robust. The correlations for the mean frequency magnitude of this filter remained significant when image identifiability was incorporated, suggesting that memory and association are not exclusively driving (aesthetic) preference. These results are consistent with findings reported by Albrecht and Geisler (1997), demonstrating that human beings are tuned to specific frequencies and orientations. Overall, the results reported in this paper begin to substantiate a claim that specific frequencies contained in images do play a significant role in human preference