This book examines paintings using a computational and quantitative approach. Specifically, it compares paintings to photographs, addressing the strengths and limitations of both. Particular
aesthetic practices are examined such as the vista, foreground to background organisation and the depth planes. These are analysed using a range of computational approaches and clear
observations are made. New generations of image-capture devices such as Google goggles and the light field camera, promise a future in which the formal attributes of a photograph are made
available for editing to a degree that has hitherto been the exclusive territory of painting. In this sense paintings and photographs are converging, and it therefore seems an opportune time to
study the comparisons between them. In this context, the book includes cutting-edge work examining how some of the aesthetic attributes of a painting can be transferred to a photograph using
the latest computational approaches.
