10 ms·

I appreciate the historical tradition of using the photo of beautiful young Lena Söderberg as a test image, but it's time to move on. It's fun for us hetero ma

by loudmax 12y ago

I appreciate the historical tradition of using the photo of beautiful young Lena Söderberg as a test image, but it's time to move on. It's fun for us hetero males, but like it or not, this sends a message to young women that they aren't welcome in this field. I wish Fabrice Bellard would have left them out of the demo set. Having said that, all those demo photos do look good. I was wondering how we were going to see a demo in the browser without built-in support, but leave it to the man who put Linux in the browser to write a decoder in javascript. This is an encouraging project.

gambiter 12y ago
People are too sensitive. I'm a hetero male, and I don't find the image 'fun' at all... it's just an image. It doesn't send a message to anyone. If anything, I don't really care for it for image algorithm tests because the palette is fairly flat. No matter how you feel about the image itself, though, there is value in continuing to use it... people are familiar with it, to the point of it becoming almost cliché. This takes the focus off of the image and subject and puts it squarely on the image algorithm.
- minikites 12y ago
  > I'm a hetero male ... it's just an image. That's the exact privilege you get to enjoy as a hetero male. You get to ignore things like this when your female colleagues (if you're lucky enough to work with any) have to look at the image and be reminded that many people continue to view them as objects.
  - gambiter 12y ago
    Not sure if you're trolling, but I have a spare minute... - If I post a picture of a cute kitten, does it mean I look at a cat as an object? That I will only under-appreciate all animals because I liked a photo of one? - If I post a picture of my mother or father, am I objectifying them? - What if I take a picture of a street performer who's doing some awesome thing and post it... am I reducing them to simply an object of attraction? I just said it didn't affect me one way or another... that it is just an image. If someone thinks this image means I view a woman as an object, they are projecting THEIR OWN ISSUES onto me. That is the ONLY way that it could be offensive, in that they are choosing to be offended by something that 99% of the population think nothing about.
    - geofft 12y ago
      This isn't just about having a picture. I'm not sure how you got that impression. It's about the context where it comes from and the repeated use of the picture in a scientific context. If you have a picture of your parents on your desk, that's great and I respect your love for your family. If you keep using a crop of your mother from her Playboy centerfold in the '70s as a test case for your algorithms, and you encourage other scientists to use the same picture, I might be a bit weirded out.
      - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
        >If you keep using a crop of your mother from her Playboy centerfold in the '70s as a test case for your algorithms, and you encourage other scientists to use the same picture, I might be a bit weirded out. And who wouldn't be! But that begs the question, is there a son or daughter of Lena Soderberg who is also a researcher or software engineer working in image compression algorithms? http://www.ee.cityu.edu.hk/~lmpo/lenna/Lenna97.html http://www.ee.cityu.edu.hk/~lmpo/lenna/Lenna97.html
        j2kun 12y ago
        It does not "beg" any questions. It is still a question of context. Sexualizing women has nothing to do with image processing research.
        fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
        >It does not "beg" any questions. Yes it does. geofft wants to imply that it is somehow equivalent of using a nude of one's own mother, which is absurd. >Sexualizing women has nothing to do with ... Tell me why you think this one[1] is okay, as opposed to the Lena image; and what it has to do with whatever it is you do. [1] http://jeremykun.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/gala-dali.jpg?w=500&h=664 http://jeremykun.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/gala-dali.jpg?w...
        j2kun 12y ago
- deleted 12y ago
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- sp332 12y ago
  The smallish downside of continuing with it may outweigh the very small upside. The image by itself might not be a big deal, but we're trying to disrupt the pattern of women being used only as objects, not perpetuate it.
  - FeeTinesAMady 12y ago
    No, the upside of continuing to use it is to show the politically correct bullies that we aren't afraid, and you aren't going to get everything you want.
    - sp332 12y ago
      CS enrollment is down. I think it's because the industry is full of inconsiderate assholes.
      - FeeTinesAMady 12y ago
        There is nothing inconsiderate about using the cropped image "Lena". Nothing. It is not an offensive image. Only hypersensitive people who choose to be offended by everything find it offensive, and those people should be fought against, not placated.
        sp332 12y ago
        Look, you're under no real obligation to stop being an inconsiderate asshole. I'm just pointing out that there are practical consequences. You don't have to be offended by the image. You don't even have to understand why people are offended, that's fine. But if you don't take other people's feelings into consideration, that's the inconsiderate part. Other people are going to have different opinions than you do. Telling other people they're not allowed to be offended is why you're an asshole.
        FeeTinesAMady 12y ago
        I'm just saying that anyone who IS offended by it is a whiny, oversensitive asshole who wants to force the world to accommodate them, and that is wrong. Standing up to them does not make me the asshole: babying them makes you the asshole. Edit: just take another look at the cropped picture "Lena". If your argument is that that is somehow offensive, you are wrong, plain and simple.
liotier 12y ago
> I appreciate the historical tradition of using the photo of beautiful young Lena Söderberg as a test image, but it's time to move on. It's fun for us hetero males, but like it or not, this sends a message to young women that they aren't welcome in this field. I find your comment a bit strange. I am an heterosexual male and I find this picture utterly uninteresting from a sexual point of view. To me, the appeal of using this pictures is sheer seventies nostalgia... I'm too young to have been alive in 1973 but I'm old enough to remember gawking in awe at the wall of the computer room adorned with output from the first desktop color printer I ever heard of or the first laser printer I ever saw. The example picture used was Lena. The picture reminds me of old computer rooms... I don't even know who the model is and I don't even find her pretty. By all means use a better picture... But when a Hello World moment is required on a printer, this one is a very strong contender.
DanBC 12y ago
Why don't you find a set of great test images (under suitable licence) then run those through the wide variety of image formats at different settings, and host it all on a website? (Put a few ads on it and you have nearly passive income, if the hosting isn't too much)
- geofft 12y ago
  Did you read the article? There were _several_ great test images used in the Mozilla study under suitable licenses, and Bellard did test with some of those. The Lena picture here wasn't particularly scientifically useful, it was presumably just used out of a sense of tradition. (Mozilla didn't use it.) http://people.mozilla.org/~josh/lossy_compressed_image_study_july_2014/#image_sets http://people.mozilla.org/~josh/lossy_compressed_image_study...
  - ANTSANTS 12y ago
    What do you know, there are other attractive women in those photosets, including at least one that appears to be wearing roughly as little as Lena. It's almost like our brains are wired for facial recognition and thus attractive faces are good test subjects for image compression algorithms or something.
    - j2kun 12y ago
      Are any of the pictures cropped segments of pornographic images?
      - ANTSANTS 12y ago
        I dunno, it's kinda hard to tell with this one: http://r0k.us/graphics/kodak/kodim04.html http://r0k.us/graphics/kodak/kodim04.html The fact that you call the uncropped image "pornographic" (which, yes, it technically is) when Playboy centerfolds are rather tame by modern standards kinda hints at the real problem here: the boring old American prudishness that has been masquerading as feminism as of late. I sincerely could not care less if Bellard had used Billy Herrington's toned ass as a test subject. The sooner that our society can get past this ridiculous fear of sexuality and the human body, the better. Perhaps not coincidentally, Bellard is from France, a culture much more accepting of nudity and sexuality than ours. I would not be surprised if he had simply not considered the possibility of prudes across the pond getting outraged over such an innocuous thing.
j2kun 12y ago
I think everyone is forgetting the fact that the uncropped photograph is pornographic. So the rule should be "If you use Lena, use a similarly cropped picture of a nude male model."
- parfe 12y ago
  People aren't forgetting. It's a disgusting "in" joke. The entire point of including it is because it's pornographic. Disappointing, but unsurprising, to see HN defending the use of literal pornography in a professional setting. I thought we moved past the Ruby on Rails jerks defending porn in a professional setting as harmless fun.
ANTSANTS 12y ago
I think people that pretend to be offended by things like this, unwittingly infantilizing the people that they are trying to support, do far more to discourage minorities from tech than pictures of women's faces.
- geofft 12y ago
  I'm curious if you're basing this belief on actual information from the people in question, or just your intuition about what they probably think. Dianne O'Leary, distinguished university professor emerita in UMD's CS department, objects to it: https://www.cs.umd.edu/users/oleary/faculty/node8.html https://www.cs.umd.edu/users/oleary/faculty/node8.html Sunny Bains, senior teaching fellow at UCL, also objects (see page 6): http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/lennapg/pcs_mirror/may_june01.pdf http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/lennapg/pcs_mirror/may_june01.p...
  - deleted 12y ago
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  - ANTSANTS 12y ago
    I was just reading another article on here about fractal image compression and stumbled across this: http://pointersgonewild.com/2014/01/02/tile-based-image-compression/ http://pointersgonewild.com/2014/01/02/tile-based-image-comp... written by this woman: https://twitter.com/Love2Code https://twitter.com/Love2Code Maybe you can't generalize the opinions of two people to 50% of the human race?
    - geofft 12y ago
      I agree that you can't generalize the opinions of two people (or even three). But you certainly can't generalize from zero.
      - malandrew 12y ago
        You're assuming that ANTSANTS is generalizing from zero. Since he's linked to one example of one individual that is mature enough to realize that the importance of that common bitmap isn't its origin but what concepts and ideas in the field of image compression those set of pixels have been used to demonstrate, and how those ideas relate to machine learning. Pointers Gone Wild is a great blog, with great technical content, written by someone that is actually accomplishing something because they are fully focused on what actually matters instead of the accidental origin of those pixels. ANTSANTS' anecdotal evidence serves as a counterpoint to your anecdotal evidence, but you know what they say, the plural of anecdotes is not data. Instead you may want to work from a statistically significant sample size when making your point. If not, don't be surprised when people discount any conclusions you have made based on anecdotes.
yason 12y ago
Not everything is about gender, sexism, feminism, or chauvinism. There are very few things in the world that are not somehow associated with male vs. female in an objectively equal way. The Lena in question is just an image with a long tradition. Anyone can find and use a male image for his/her own image compression tests if s/he wants to. It's not a statement to use Lena instead.
- j2kun 12y ago
  Just because something is a tradition does not make it a good tradition, nor does it justify continuing the tradition.
  - malandrew 12y ago
    True, but you still need to balance the relative merits of continuing versus discontinuing the tradition. There is a very real loss from discontinuing the tradition in question without first augmenting references for many of the algorithms that use Lena with other standard reference images. That's a real and immediate loss. Try a different strategy: offer a better alternative that makes it so practitioners not only don't notices the loss of Lena in common usage, but instead overwhelmingly favor alternatives. Create a better product.
    - j2kun 12y ago
      Real comparisons of algorithms do not operate on a single image, but large suites of images, where the results are computed as averages. Changing the dataset by removing one image is unlikely to be a "very real loss." Alternatives exist, and AFAIK Lena is just used as a "canonical" example to use as a nice picture (like the Zachary Karate Club network).
- andreasvc 12y ago
  I understood the complaint to be not about male vs. female, but about the fact that the original is a pornographic picture from Playboy magazine.
malandrew 12y ago
What about introducing a new male equivalent image of Lena instead? This approach would at least balance things out while maintaining an image that has become a standard to compare things to for a long time. If I were someone working on image compression techniques I would probably have seen many many algorithms and their output using that image so when I see a new algorithm and a new Lena, I might look at the results and think "Hey, this is similar to this other approach I am familiar with" So many photos taken on any given day are photos of people, so it's simply not practical to eliminate a human subject from test images. If we're going to have an image of a human subject, that person is going to have to be somewhere on the gender spectrum. More data (images of two people) is preferable to no data (no images of people to avoid the risk of offending anyone)
- geofft 12y ago
  There's a difference between using a picture of a human face because we've determined it's useful for the test at hand, and using a 1970s Playboy scan because that was the most convenient thing for early computer-graphics researchers in the 1970s. In particular, the (appropriately-licensed) Kodak image set used in the Mozilla study includes multiple pictures of women, none of which are Playboy scans. The complaint is not that there's a picture of a woman, it is that _this_ particular picture keeps being used despite no particular scientific reason why it's optimal for comparing graphics formats. http://r0k.us/graphics/kodak/ http://r0k.us/graphics/kodak/
  - malandrew 12y ago
    So the only real contention people have here is the source publication of the original image, right? Because AFAICT, the cropped image (as it's always been used in practice) is nor more or less offensive that kodim04.png from the kodak set. Furthermore, why does the licensing matter? Near as I can tell every use of Lena, except for by a for-profit company, constitutes fair use. The image, every time I've seen it, has been used for non-profit educational work. It's never reproduced in its entirety. The use of the image for this image compression purposes has no impact on the original market for which the image was originally created. Does this not meet the requirements of fair use? That all said, I agree that if their is a better images available for this purposes, those should be used as well, but that is an entirely separate issue from whether or not Lena should or should not be used. The happenstance provenance of the image is really the only controversial detail, and if we go back to the history of why it was used it was mere chance: Alexander Sawchuk estimates that it was in June or July of 1973 when he, then an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California Signal and Image Processing Institute (SIPI), along with a graduate student and the SIPI lab manager, was hurriedly searching the lab for a good image to scan for a colleague's conference paper. They got tired of their stock of usual test images, dull stuff dating back to television standards work in the early 1960s. They wanted something glossy to ensure good output dynamic range, and they wanted a human face. Just then, somebody happened to walk in with a recent issue of Playboy.[0] Put yourself back in 1973. Imagine all the different sources of high quality glossy images of a human face with high dynamic range you might have easy access to 41 years ago. I have a hard time thinking of content that would have been available at that time that would have rivaled Playboy. I have no qualms with people judging things from today in todays terms, but presentism [1] tends to rub me the wrong way. If you want to judge something, don't do so anachronistically. Anyways, I want to re-iterate my main point, which you did not address: If I were someone working on image compression techniques I would probably have seen many many algorithms and their output using that image so when I see a new algorithm and a new Lena, I might look at the results and think "Hey, this is similar to this other approach I am familiar with" There is value in consistency/continuity. Starting to use the image of Fabio Lanzoni like Deanna Needell and Rachel Ward did is a "lossless" approach of dealing with the controversial provenance of Lena. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna#History [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_%28literary_and_historical_analysis%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_%28literary_and_hist...
yoha 12y ago
It's actually a very good point when you take into consideration the origin of the image. From [1]: “Lena Söderberg […] appeared as a Playmate in the November 1972 issue of Playboy magazine” and it is referring to this particular photo. Article in cyrilic (Russian?) [2] shows what the uncropped version look like. Putting things in context is important. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lena_S%C3%B6derberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lena_S%C3%B6derberg [2] http://dimka-jd.livejournal.com/3673381.html http://dimka-jd.livejournal.com/3673381.html (NSFW)
- 1ris 12y ago
  No, it's not. Because people do not use the second image, nobody sees it until you linked, and it cant "send a message to young women that they aren't welcome in this field". All this is incredibly unimportant. You just made me waste 60 seconds of my life on a pointless thing and i want them back.
plesner 12y ago
I just stopped reading after I got to that image. Why, with all the photos you could possibly choose, use a sexually suggestive one? And one whose context is the kind of boys-club software engineering we should be doing everything to get away from. Sigh. Also, looking at the other comments, the fact that you happen to be fine with that image is neither here nor there. It certainly doesn't cancel out the fact that I'm not.
rell 12y ago
That's right. Fabrice Bellard, check your privilege you white hetero ablebodied cis scum, shitlord. Although, it could've been worse. At least is not a photo of himself wearing some colorful chick shirt.
lectrick 12y ago
> photo of beautiful young Lena Söderberg You are either subtly trolling, or have an incredible amount of cognitive dissonance going on here. You both objectify her by using those adjectives ("beautiful, young") AND THEN go on to state that use of a female model is sexist. Is use of a well-dressed male model sexist? If not, then your entire PREMISE is, in fact, sexist! Not to mention this photo is ENTIRELY asexual. Are you suggesting we avoid use of human models entirely to dodge sexism? Good luck with that.
Too 12y ago
90% of all photos posted on the internet contains a human face. Having a human face as a test picture makes perfect sense and this one has been used forever so it's a good benchmark that people can compare and relate to. It's not like she's totally naked or anything like that either.
ta0967 12y ago
it's disconcerting how the PC movement in the west converges with the talliban movement in the middle east.
jongraehl 12y ago
Clearly we should replace it with a more pornographic test image, since that's the most common use case.

by loudmax 12y ago

gambiter 12y ago

People are too sensitive. I'm a hetero male, and I don't find the image 'fun' at all... it's just an image. It doesn't send a message to anyone. If anything, I don't really care for it for image algorithm tests because the palette is fairly flat. No matter how you feel about the image itself, though, there is value in continuing to use it... people are familiar with it, to the point of it becoming almost cliché. This takes the focus off of the image and subject and puts it squarely on the image algorithm.

minikites 12y ago
> I'm a hetero male ... it's just an image. That's the exact privilege you get to enjoy as a hetero male. You get to ignore things like this when your female colleagues (if you're lucky enough to work with any) have to look at the image and be reminded that many people continue to view them as objects.
- gambiter 12y ago
  Not sure if you're trolling, but I have a spare minute... - If I post a picture of a cute kitten, does it mean I look at a cat as an object? That I will only under-appreciate all animals because I liked a photo of one? - If I post a picture of my mother or father, am I objectifying them? - What if I take a picture of a street performer who's doing some awesome thing and post it... am I reducing them to simply an object of attraction? I just said it didn't affect me one way or another... that it is just an image. If someone thinks this image means I view a woman as an object, they are projecting THEIR OWN ISSUES onto me. That is the ONLY way that it could be offensive, in that they are choosing to be offended by something that 99% of the population think nothing about.
  - geofft 12y ago
    This isn't just about having a picture. I'm not sure how you got that impression. It's about the context where it comes from and the repeated use of the picture in a scientific context. If you have a picture of your parents on your desk, that's great and I respect your love for your family. If you keep using a crop of your mother from her Playboy centerfold in the '70s as a test case for your algorithms, and you encourage other scientists to use the same picture, I might be a bit weirded out.
    - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
      >If you keep using a crop of your mother from her Playboy centerfold in the '70s as a test case for your algorithms, and you encourage other scientists to use the same picture, I might be a bit weirded out. And who wouldn't be! But that begs the question, is there a son or daughter of Lena Soderberg who is also a researcher or software engineer working in image compression algorithms? http://www.ee.cityu.edu.hk/~lmpo/lenna/Lenna97.html http://www.ee.cityu.edu.hk/~lmpo/lenna/Lenna97.html
      - j2kun 12y ago
        It does not "beg" any questions. It is still a question of context. Sexualizing women has nothing to do with image processing research.
        fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
        >It does not "beg" any questions. Yes it does. geofft wants to imply that it is somehow equivalent of using a nude of one's own mother, which is absurd. >Sexualizing women has nothing to do with ... Tell me why you think this one[1] is okay, as opposed to the Lena image; and what it has to do with whatever it is you do. [1] http://jeremykun.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/gala-dali.jpg?w=500&h=664 http://jeremykun.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/gala-dali.jpg?w...
        j2kun 12y ago
deleted 12y ago
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sp332 12y ago
The smallish downside of continuing with it may outweigh the very small upside. The image by itself might not be a big deal, but we're trying to disrupt the pattern of women being used only as objects, not perpetuate it.
- FeeTinesAMady 12y ago
  No, the upside of continuing to use it is to show the politically correct bullies that we aren't afraid, and you aren't going to get everything you want.
  - sp332 12y ago
    CS enrollment is down. I think it's because the industry is full of inconsiderate assholes.
    - FeeTinesAMady 12y ago
      There is nothing inconsiderate about using the cropped image "Lena". Nothing. It is not an offensive image. Only hypersensitive people who choose to be offended by everything find it offensive, and those people should be fought against, not placated.
      - sp332 12y ago
        Look, you're under no real obligation to stop being an inconsiderate asshole. I'm just pointing out that there are practical consequences. You don't have to be offended by the image. You don't even have to understand why people are offended, that's fine. But if you don't take other people's feelings into consideration, that's the inconsiderate part. Other people are going to have different opinions than you do. Telling other people they're not allowed to be offended is why you're an asshole.
        FeeTinesAMady 12y ago
        I'm just saying that anyone who IS offended by it is a whiny, oversensitive asshole who wants to force the world to accommodate them, and that is wrong. Standing up to them does not make me the asshole: babying them makes you the asshole. Edit: just take another look at the cropped picture "Lena". If your argument is that that is somehow offensive, you are wrong, plain and simple.

liotier 12y ago

> I appreciate the historical tradition of using the photo of beautiful young Lena Söderberg as a test image, but it's time to move on. It's fun for us hetero males, but like it or not, this sends a message to young women that they aren't welcome in this field. I find your comment a bit strange. I am an heterosexual male and I find this picture utterly uninteresting from a sexual point of view. To me, the appeal of using this pictures is sheer seventies nostalgia... I'm too young to have been alive in 1973 but I'm old enough to remember gawking in awe at the wall of the computer room adorned with output from the first desktop color printer I ever heard of or the first laser printer I ever saw. The example picture used was Lena. The picture reminds me of old computer rooms... I don't even know who the model is and I don't even find her pretty. By all means use a better picture... But when a Hello World moment is required on a printer, this one is a very strong contender.

DanBC 12y ago

Why don't you find a set of great test images (under suitable licence) then run those through the wide variety of image formats at different settings, and host it all on a website? (Put a few ads on it and you have nearly passive income, if the hosting isn't too much)

geofft 12y ago
Did you read the article? There were _several_ great test images used in the Mozilla study under suitable licenses, and Bellard did test with some of those. The Lena picture here wasn't particularly scientifically useful, it was presumably just used out of a sense of tradition. (Mozilla didn't use it.) http://people.mozilla.org/~josh/lossy_compressed_image_study_july_2014/#image_sets http://people.mozilla.org/~josh/lossy_compressed_image_study...
- ANTSANTS 12y ago
  What do you know, there are other attractive women in those photosets, including at least one that appears to be wearing roughly as little as Lena. It's almost like our brains are wired for facial recognition and thus attractive faces are good test subjects for image compression algorithms or something.
  - j2kun 12y ago
    Are any of the pictures cropped segments of pornographic images?
    - ANTSANTS 12y ago
      I dunno, it's kinda hard to tell with this one: http://r0k.us/graphics/kodak/kodim04.html http://r0k.us/graphics/kodak/kodim04.html The fact that you call the uncropped image "pornographic" (which, yes, it technically is) when Playboy centerfolds are rather tame by modern standards kinda hints at the real problem here: the boring old American prudishness that has been masquerading as feminism as of late. I sincerely could not care less if Bellard had used Billy Herrington's toned ass as a test subject. The sooner that our society can get past this ridiculous fear of sexuality and the human body, the better. Perhaps not coincidentally, Bellard is from France, a culture much more accepting of nudity and sexuality than ours. I would not be surprised if he had simply not considered the possibility of prudes across the pond getting outraged over such an innocuous thing.

j2kun 12y ago

I think everyone is forgetting the fact that the uncropped photograph is pornographic. So the rule should be "If you use Lena, use a similarly cropped picture of a nude male model."

parfe 12y ago
People aren't forgetting. It's a disgusting "in" joke. The entire point of including it is because it's pornographic. Disappointing, but unsurprising, to see HN defending the use of literal pornography in a professional setting. I thought we moved past the Ruby on Rails jerks defending porn in a professional setting as harmless fun.

ANTSANTS 12y ago

I think people that pretend to be offended by things like this, unwittingly infantilizing the people that they are trying to support, do far more to discourage minorities from tech than pictures of women's faces.

geofft 12y ago
I'm curious if you're basing this belief on actual information from the people in question, or just your intuition about what they probably think. Dianne O'Leary, distinguished university professor emerita in UMD's CS department, objects to it: https://www.cs.umd.edu/users/oleary/faculty/node8.html https://www.cs.umd.edu/users/oleary/faculty/node8.html Sunny Bains, senior teaching fellow at UCL, also objects (see page 6): http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/lennapg/pcs_mirror/may_june01.pdf http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/lennapg/pcs_mirror/may_june01.p...
- deleted 12y ago
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- ANTSANTS 12y ago
  I was just reading another article on here about fractal image compression and stumbled across this: http://pointersgonewild.com/2014/01/02/tile-based-image-compression/ http://pointersgonewild.com/2014/01/02/tile-based-image-comp... written by this woman: https://twitter.com/Love2Code https://twitter.com/Love2Code Maybe you can't generalize the opinions of two people to 50% of the human race?
  - geofft 12y ago
    I agree that you can't generalize the opinions of two people (or even three). But you certainly can't generalize from zero.
    - malandrew 12y ago
      You're assuming that ANTSANTS is generalizing from zero. Since he's linked to one example of one individual that is mature enough to realize that the importance of that common bitmap isn't its origin but what concepts and ideas in the field of image compression those set of pixels have been used to demonstrate, and how those ideas relate to machine learning. Pointers Gone Wild is a great blog, with great technical content, written by someone that is actually accomplishing something because they are fully focused on what actually matters instead of the accidental origin of those pixels. ANTSANTS' anecdotal evidence serves as a counterpoint to your anecdotal evidence, but you know what they say, the plural of anecdotes is not data. Instead you may want to work from a statistically significant sample size when making your point. If not, don't be surprised when people discount any conclusions you have made based on anecdotes.

yason 12y ago

Not everything is about gender, sexism, feminism, or chauvinism. There are very few things in the world that are not somehow associated with male vs. female in an objectively equal way. The Lena in question is just an image with a long tradition. Anyone can find and use a male image for his/her own image compression tests if s/he wants to. It's not a statement to use Lena instead.

j2kun 12y ago
Just because something is a tradition does not make it a good tradition, nor does it justify continuing the tradition.
- malandrew 12y ago
  True, but you still need to balance the relative merits of continuing versus discontinuing the tradition. There is a very real loss from discontinuing the tradition in question without first augmenting references for many of the algorithms that use Lena with other standard reference images. That's a real and immediate loss. Try a different strategy: offer a better alternative that makes it so practitioners not only don't notices the loss of Lena in common usage, but instead overwhelmingly favor alternatives. Create a better product.
  - j2kun 12y ago
    Real comparisons of algorithms do not operate on a single image, but large suites of images, where the results are computed as averages. Changing the dataset by removing one image is unlikely to be a "very real loss." Alternatives exist, and AFAIK Lena is just used as a "canonical" example to use as a nice picture (like the Zachary Karate Club network).
andreasvc 12y ago
I understood the complaint to be not about male vs. female, but about the fact that the original is a pornographic picture from Playboy magazine.

malandrew 12y ago

What about introducing a new male equivalent image of Lena instead? This approach would at least balance things out while maintaining an image that has become a standard to compare things to for a long time. If I were someone working on image compression techniques I would probably have seen many many algorithms and their output using that image so when I see a new algorithm and a new Lena, I might look at the results and think "Hey, this is similar to this other approach I am familiar with" So many photos taken on any given day are photos of people, so it's simply not practical to eliminate a human subject from test images. If we're going to have an image of a human subject, that person is going to have to be somewhere on the gender spectrum. More data (images of two people) is preferable to no data (no images of people to avoid the risk of offending anyone)

geofft 12y ago
There's a difference between using a picture of a human face because we've determined it's useful for the test at hand, and using a 1970s Playboy scan because that was the most convenient thing for early computer-graphics researchers in the 1970s. In particular, the (appropriately-licensed) Kodak image set used in the Mozilla study includes multiple pictures of women, none of which are Playboy scans. The complaint is not that there's a picture of a woman, it is that _this_ particular picture keeps being used despite no particular scientific reason why it's optimal for comparing graphics formats. http://r0k.us/graphics/kodak/ http://r0k.us/graphics/kodak/
- malandrew 12y ago
  So the only real contention people have here is the source publication of the original image, right? Because AFAICT, the cropped image (as it's always been used in practice) is nor more or less offensive that kodim04.png from the kodak set. Furthermore, why does the licensing matter? Near as I can tell every use of Lena, except for by a for-profit company, constitutes fair use. The image, every time I've seen it, has been used for non-profit educational work. It's never reproduced in its entirety. The use of the image for this image compression purposes has no impact on the original market for which the image was originally created. Does this not meet the requirements of fair use? That all said, I agree that if their is a better images available for this purposes, those should be used as well, but that is an entirely separate issue from whether or not Lena should or should not be used. The happenstance provenance of the image is really the only controversial detail, and if we go back to the history of why it was used it was mere chance: Alexander Sawchuk estimates that it was in June or July of 1973 when he, then an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California Signal and Image Processing Institute (SIPI), along with a graduate student and the SIPI lab manager, was hurriedly searching the lab for a good image to scan for a colleague's conference paper. They got tired of their stock of usual test images, dull stuff dating back to television standards work in the early 1960s. They wanted something glossy to ensure good output dynamic range, and they wanted a human face. Just then, somebody happened to walk in with a recent issue of Playboy.[0] Put yourself back in 1973. Imagine all the different sources of high quality glossy images of a human face with high dynamic range you might have easy access to 41 years ago. I have a hard time thinking of content that would have been available at that time that would have rivaled Playboy. I have no qualms with people judging things from today in todays terms, but presentism [1] tends to rub me the wrong way. If you want to judge something, don't do so anachronistically. Anyways, I want to re-iterate my main point, which you did not address: If I were someone working on image compression techniques I would probably have seen many many algorithms and their output using that image so when I see a new algorithm and a new Lena, I might look at the results and think "Hey, this is similar to this other approach I am familiar with" There is value in consistency/continuity. Starting to use the image of Fabio Lanzoni like Deanna Needell and Rachel Ward did is a "lossless" approach of dealing with the controversial provenance of Lena. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna#History [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_%28literary_and_historical_analysis%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_%28literary_and_hist...

yoha 12y ago

It's actually a very good point when you take into consideration the origin of the image. From [1]: “Lena Söderberg […] appeared as a Playmate in the November 1972 issue of Playboy magazine” and it is referring to this particular photo. Article in cyrilic (Russian?) [2] shows what the uncropped version look like. Putting things in context is important. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lena_S%C3%B6derberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lena_S%C3%B6derberg [2] http://dimka-jd.livejournal.com/3673381.html http://dimka-jd.livejournal.com/3673381.html (NSFW)

1ris 12y ago
No, it's not. Because people do not use the second image, nobody sees it until you linked, and it cant "send a message to young women that they aren't welcome in this field". All this is incredibly unimportant. You just made me waste 60 seconds of my life on a pointless thing and i want them back.

plesner 12y ago

I just stopped reading after I got to that image. Why, with all the photos you could possibly choose, use a sexually suggestive one? And one whose context is the kind of boys-club software engineering we should be doing everything to get away from. Sigh. Also, looking at the other comments, the fact that you happen to be fine with that image is neither here nor there. It certainly doesn't cancel out the fact that I'm not.

rell 12y ago

That's right. Fabrice Bellard, check your privilege you white hetero ablebodied cis scum, shitlord. Although, it could've been worse. At least is not a photo of himself wearing some colorful chick shirt.

lectrick 12y ago

> photo of beautiful young Lena Söderberg You are either subtly trolling, or have an incredible amount of cognitive dissonance going on here. You both objectify her by using those adjectives ("beautiful, young") AND THEN go on to state that use of a female model is sexist. Is use of a well-dressed male model sexist? If not, then your entire PREMISE is, in fact, sexist! Not to mention this photo is ENTIRELY asexual. Are you suggesting we avoid use of human models entirely to dodge sexism? Good luck with that.

Too 12y ago

90% of all photos posted on the internet contains a human face. Having a human face as a test picture makes perfect sense and this one has been used forever so it's a good benchmark that people can compare and relate to. It's not like she's totally naked or anything like that either.

ta0967 12y ago

it's disconcerting how the PC movement in the west converges with the talliban movement in the middle east.

jongraehl 12y ago

Clearly we should replace it with a more pornographic test image, since that's the most common use case.