Texture preference and global frequency magnitudes

A relationship between human preferences for physical properties of visual texture is established in this paper. The author asks whether there is a measurable correlation between aesthetic ratings for textural images and their physical properties. A bank of Gabor filters covering a range of frequencies and orientations are used to extract properties. Three studies are conducted and the correlations between aesthetic ratings and the properties were significant and large. The correlations proved robust when image identifiability was incorporated in the first and third studies and removed from the second study. In this, it is suggested that memory and association are not exclusively driving (aesthetic) preference; that it is also tuned to properties of spatial frequency and orientation of certain visual stimuli.