What a Deep Neural Network thinks makes the best #selfie

TL;DR: the best selfies are from women, with long hair, often B&W, with letterbox-type borders. The included picture is the top 100 ranked images.

To take a good selfie, Do:

  • Be female. Women are consistently ranked higher than men. In particular, notice that there is not a single guy in the top 100.
  • Face should occupy about 1/3 of the image. Notice that the position and pose of the face is quite consistent among the top images. The face always occupies about 1/3 of the image, is slightly tilted, and is positioned in the center and at the top. Which also brings me to:
  • Cut off your forehead. What’s up with that? It looks like a popular strategy, at least for women.Show your long hair. Notice the frequent prominence of long strands of hair running down the shoulders.
  • Oversaturate the face. Notice the frequent occurrence of over-saturated lighting, which often makes the face look much more uniform and faded out. Related to that,
  • Put a filter on it. Black and White photos seem to do quite well, and most of the top images seem to contain some kind of a filter that fades out the image and decreases the contrast.
  • Add a border. You will notice a frequent appearance of horizontal/vertical white borders.

Source: What a Deep Neural Network thinks about your #selfie