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As someone who likes photography and analytics, I disagree about the name. As you say, bokeh is about out-of-focus blur. That's sort of the opposite impression

As someone who likes photography and analytics, I disagree about the name. As you say, bokeh is about out-of-focus blur. That's sort of the opposite impression you want to present in a tool that's intended to give you "clarity" via its visualizations.

vph 13y ago
As someone who likes photography, I have to disagree about your reasoning. The clarity of your subject is as much about how much it is in focus as how much irrelevant things are out of focus. Portrait photos are often beautiful when the lens has good bokeh characteristics.
- slantyyz 13y ago
  >> The clarity of your subject is as much about how much it is in focus as how much irrelevant things are out of focus. If you actually look at the sample output of the library, there's nothing out of focus, at least from the perspective of depth of field. In my opinion (and it is just an opinion), calling all de-emphasized data bokeh is a stretch at best. Blurring and de-emphasis using color and size are two different things. >> Portrait photos are often beautiful when the lens has good bokeh characteristics. Let's be clear -- while bokeh can enhance the beauty of a portrait, it doesn't make a portrait beautiful. Most people don't know the difference between good bokeh and bad bokeh (pwang's definition of bokeh in his response to me is very good), but they can usually identify a blurred background vs. a sharp background. Many people tend to prefer a sharp subject against a blurred background, and that's usually enough for most people to consider a portrait beautiful even if the bokeh is quite ugly. Without getting into a long drawn out discussion of bokeh, you have to remember that there's also more to a beautiful portrait than the novelty of a blurred background.
  - pwang 13y ago
    > If you actually look at the sample output of the library, there's nothing out of focus, We are working on the semantic downsampling and perceptual integration aspects of visualizing large data. This currently lives in its own repo: https://github.com/JosephCottam/AbstractRendering https://github.com/JosephCottam/AbstractRendering > calling all de-emphasized data bokeh is a stretch at best It's really just meant to be an evocative metaphor... :-)
    - slantyyz 13y ago
      >> It's really just meant to be an evocative metaphor... :-) Gotcha - me not liking a name is just my own personal opinion. The library itself is interesting. You can't please everyone all of the time. ;)
    - clebio 13y ago
      If you're thinking in terms of the _spirit_ of bokeh, and understand 'semantic downsampling', you've got my vote. As someone whose tried to use D3, I like this a lot. I'll be experimenting with Bokeh now soon.
      - pwang 13y ago
        We have a paper that we'll be presenting at SPIE VDA 2014 in February: http://spie.org/EI/conferencedetails/visualization-data-analysis#session-9 http://spie.org/EI/conferencedetails/visualization-data-anal... With the 0.3 release out now, I'm focusing on building hooking up the abstract rendering backend for the plot server, so just keep an eye out.
        clebio 13y ago
        Do you guys all work for Continuum? Need more hands? ;)
        pwang 13y ago
        Could always use more hands, especially in certain areas. Shoot an email to jobs@continuum.io and reference this post.
pwang 13y ago
Actual, bokeh is about the quality of the blur. Yes, blur can have quality. If you simply removed everything that was not in focus, you lose context and texture about the subject. If you use a pinhole camera and present everything in sharp focus, you lose the insight. This is actually mentioned in the documentation: http://bokeh.pydata.org/#technical-vision http://bokeh.pydata.org/#technical-vision """ Photographers use the Japanese word “bokeh” to describe the blurring of the out-of-focus parts of an image. Its aesthetic quality can greatly enhance a photograph, and photographers artfully use focus to draw attention to subjects of interest. “Good bokeh” contributes visual interest to a photograph and places its subjects in context. In this vein of focusing on high-impact subjects while always maintaining a relationship to the data background, the Bokeh project attempts to address fundamental challenges of large dataset visualization... """
- slantyyz 13y ago
  >> Actual, bokeh is about the quality of the blur. Yes, you're right. But most people tend to treat out-of-focus blur synonymously with bokeh (the quality of the blur) -- they're related but not the same. In this particular library's case, I think they're talking about out-of-focus blur, not bokeh.
  - beat 13y ago
    Yeah, I kinda glossed over that.

vph 13y ago

As someone who likes photography, I have to disagree about your reasoning. The clarity of your subject is as much about how much it is in focus as how much irrelevant things are out of focus. Portrait photos are often beautiful when the lens has good bokeh characteristics.

slantyyz 13y ago
>> The clarity of your subject is as much about how much it is in focus as how much irrelevant things are out of focus. If you actually look at the sample output of the library, there's nothing out of focus, at least from the perspective of depth of field. In my opinion (and it is just an opinion), calling all de-emphasized data bokeh is a stretch at best. Blurring and de-emphasis using color and size are two different things. >> Portrait photos are often beautiful when the lens has good bokeh characteristics. Let's be clear -- while bokeh can enhance the beauty of a portrait, it doesn't make a portrait beautiful. Most people don't know the difference between good bokeh and bad bokeh (pwang's definition of bokeh in his response to me is very good), but they can usually identify a blurred background vs. a sharp background. Many people tend to prefer a sharp subject against a blurred background, and that's usually enough for most people to consider a portrait beautiful even if the bokeh is quite ugly. Without getting into a long drawn out discussion of bokeh, you have to remember that there's also more to a beautiful portrait than the novelty of a blurred background.
- pwang 13y ago
  > If you actually look at the sample output of the library, there's nothing out of focus, We are working on the semantic downsampling and perceptual integration aspects of visualizing large data. This currently lives in its own repo: https://github.com/JosephCottam/AbstractRendering https://github.com/JosephCottam/AbstractRendering > calling all de-emphasized data bokeh is a stretch at best It's really just meant to be an evocative metaphor... :-)
  - slantyyz 13y ago
    >> It's really just meant to be an evocative metaphor... :-) Gotcha - me not liking a name is just my own personal opinion. The library itself is interesting. You can't please everyone all of the time. ;)
  - clebio 13y ago
    If you're thinking in terms of the _spirit_ of bokeh, and understand 'semantic downsampling', you've got my vote. As someone whose tried to use D3, I like this a lot. I'll be experimenting with Bokeh now soon.
    - pwang 13y ago
      We have a paper that we'll be presenting at SPIE VDA 2014 in February: http://spie.org/EI/conferencedetails/visualization-data-analysis#session-9 http://spie.org/EI/conferencedetails/visualization-data-anal... With the 0.3 release out now, I'm focusing on building hooking up the abstract rendering backend for the plot server, so just keep an eye out.
      - clebio 13y ago
        Do you guys all work for Continuum? Need more hands? ;)
        pwang 13y ago
        Could always use more hands, especially in certain areas. Shoot an email to jobs@continuum.io and reference this post.

pwang 13y ago

Actual, bokeh is about the quality of the blur. Yes, blur can have quality. If you simply removed everything that was not in focus, you lose context and texture about the subject. If you use a pinhole camera and present everything in sharp focus, you lose the insight. This is actually mentioned in the documentation: http://bokeh.pydata.org/#technical-vision http://bokeh.pydata.org/#technical-vision """ Photographers use the Japanese word “bokeh” to describe the blurring of the out-of-focus parts of an image. Its aesthetic quality can greatly enhance a photograph, and photographers artfully use focus to draw attention to subjects of interest. “Good bokeh” contributes visual interest to a photograph and places its subjects in context. In this vein of focusing on high-impact subjects while always maintaining a relationship to the data background, the Bokeh project attempts to address fundamental challenges of large dataset visualization... """

slantyyz 13y ago
>> Actual, bokeh is about the quality of the blur. Yes, you're right. But most people tend to treat out-of-focus blur synonymously with bokeh (the quality of the blur) -- they're related but not the same. In this particular library's case, I think they're talking about out-of-focus blur, not bokeh.
- beat 13y ago
  Yeah, I kinda glossed over that.