An Evaluation of Color Sorting for Image Browsing

Abstract

Many image browsing tools employ a scrollable grid-like arrangement of thumbnails of images for enabling users to browse through image collections. The thumbnails in these arrangements are typically sorted by some kind of metadata, e.g., by filename or creation date. However, users looking for a specific image in mind prefer search by visual similarity rather than search based on simple metadata. In difference to previous work, which rarely present results from user studies, the authors provide empirical evidence that color sorting is an effective approach for that purpose. With a user survey, the authors identify which of six alternative color sorting algorithms produces the most intuitive result. The authors use the best algorithm, a simple HSV-based sorting method, and compare users’ visual search performance in a color sorted storyboard against performance in an unsorted storyboard. The results show that color sorting can improve user interaction, both in terms of subjective impressions and visual search times.

A user study on image browsing on touchscreens

“…As an alternative to this non-clustered hue and luminance based arrangement of thumbnails -shown in Figure 1b -we have also obtained nice looking and intuitive non-clustered arrangements using the color sorting algorithm suggested by Schoeffmann and Ahlström [14]. This algorithm sorts images by their dominant hue level, as obtained through 24-bins HSV histograms.…”

“…However, no statistical evidence, resulting from a direct comparison with the standard list interface, has been showing that any of these interfaces improve image search on small screens. But, empirical evidences exist which show that when users browse their image collections, they prefer to be presented many images at once [11], that users are good at distinguishing the content of even very small thumbnails on small touchscreens [4], and that color-sorted thumbnail arrangements can improve the visual search of images [10,14]. Placing thumbnails on a globe, as proposed by Schaefer [13], seems as a promising alternative to the standard list presentation as a globe incorporates these favorable properties: many thumbnails can be displayed at once; peripheral thumbnails are initially small, but can be shown at larger size by rotating the globe; thumbnails can easily be arranged according to color-similarity, with the spherical shape providing an overview of the different color regions.…”

Next generation image and video browsing on mobile devices

“…Browsing is more an interactive search process where the user has a rough idea of what she/he is looking for and tries to interactively find it. Recent research results show that 3D visualizations and similarity-based arrangements can improve visual search on mobile devices [13].…”

“…Zooming the view is possible by using pinch gestures. Figure 1c shows the third interface, which is an advanced version of the ring interface presented in [13]. Images are arranged on the surface of a 3D ring.…”

“…Two interfaces of our previous user study [1] (an image grid and a 3D globe) are joined with two new prototypes: The ImagePane and an improved version of the 3D ring interface proposed in [13]. To evaluate the performance of the three novel interfaces a traditional grid arrangement is included in the user test as a baseline (see Figure 1a).…”