Study on how to make our photos on Facebook like

Nikon conducts and publishes from time to time on topics photographic studies made ​​by people outside the firm. Recently published one about food photography  and, a little more time, one on the difference between the vision of the professional and the amateur .

Now it is the turn to a curious experiment conducted by the University of California, which has sought to determine what factors influence people galardonen with Like "a photo in Facebook.The study involved 500 people who evaluated 35 photographs of various subjects and uneven photo quality.

Based on these results, researchers have developed a curious formula that users of social networks can take as a guide for what to take and what photos go to the net, if your intention is to obtain the best reaction from friends. The formula is this:

P + A + (I + H + B) 
______________________________________ EC (correct exposure) - D (blur)

And the explanation follows. Those who upload pictures to Facebook should choose to upload images that include a landscape (P) or an animal (A) , and also in its composition containing a load of Inspiration (I) -a sunset, for example, of Humor (H) or Beauty (B) . All this, without forgetting that it is also essential to capture the light in the most true to life, in other words, you have to get the Correct Exposure (EC) and minimize the blur (D).  

As you can see the scientific payload of the formula is not very high (or the conditions of the study since the photos were not on Facebook, users saw them one after another and not real navigation conditions, etc..) And includes factors as inspiration (I guess that would be inspiring) that are a little ambiguous in Spanish, however, show that although some things may be logical, it never hurts to see them reflected black over white.

Xample well by the fact that the technical aspects also play an important role. The results demonstrate that low resolution images or blurring typically get less positive feedback, and that a well lit photo will always be better received than a dark or overexposed.

Interestingly, the experiment also showed that despite the popularity of creative filters that modify the color or texture of images, such effects have hardly any impact on the amount of "Like" to receive a picture.

"According to our study, emotion and quality are what really count," said Dr. Paul Piff, head of the research team. "When we asked participants to indicate to what photos would give them" Like "on Facebook, we also evaluated their perception of each image. The most likely to be qualified with "likes" were those who saw them inspired. That fact made the images with landscapes taken out portrayed advantage to those people who are most likely to cause good humor inspiration.Also, poor image quality may hinder the transmission of emotion. If people see red eye, poorly lit scenes or faces blurred, the chances of that are attracted by the image are significantly lower. "

Methodology  

To determine which is the essence of the photographs that can "like" the team from the University of California at Berkeley asked 500 people across Europe to examine 35 randomly ordered images, belonging to five common thematic categories in social networks.

Respondents were asked to imagine that they were looking at the pictures in the News section of Facebook, and that they had all been uploaded by acquaintances or friends. Then they were asked to assess whether they would grant one "like" and comment on whether they were attractive photos and what feelings they provoke.

Among the 35 images had several photographs of people, different landscapes, a variety of emblematic events (like birthdays or weddings), pictures of animals and pictures of food. Some images appeared twice in the test, with changes in areas such as zoom, resolution, exposure, or more or less blurred. The difference in the answers on, for example, different versions of the same photo with varying zoom was analyzed to determine if the quality and composition of the image had.