The aesthetic appeal of depth of field in photographs

We report here how depth of field (DOF) affects the aesthetic appeal of photographs for different content categories. 339 photographs spanning eight categories were selected from Flickr, Google+, and personal collections. First, we classified the 339 photographs into three levels of depth of field: small, medium, and large. Then, we asked participants to rate the aesthetic appeal of these photographs in random order. We found that aesthetic appeal is only influenced significantly by the content category and by depth of field for animal and sport related photographs. Therefore, we conclude that depth of field should not be regarded as a common criterion for judging aesthetic appeal in different semantic content categories.