Korean Beauty Contestants – Face Morphing (opens in new tab)

I wish this comment stood out more but HN has eliminated displaying of points.

surgery first, then makeup, then lighting, then photoshop

I would think there would be even fewer "eigenfaces" if someone had Photoshopped them to look alike.

For me it doesn't really make a huge difference if plastic surgery or photoshop are the culprit. So these women don't actually all look like clones, they're just presented as clones; great.

I thought the whole point of the post was the analyses and methods and that the outcome was of little importance, but was only there to make the subject more interesting, gripping, and relevant.

Look here:

http://i.imgur.com/7kdgJ32.jpg

Particularly at #18, where it's most obvious. These pictures have been photoshopped to give the ladies the elfin look that's popular right now in Korea.

Interested to read about the better algorithms if you have some good resources.

Seconding interest on more info in the facial recognition domain and PCA.

This is quite easy to test: just take 20 beauty queens from North Korea and see what diversity you get. I believe the genetic diversity in the two countries is about the same, but they have been isolated for around 50+ years, so there is some great science to be had once North Korea opens up (think Iceland).

That's one way of putting it. A rank of six implies that if all of the faces were represented by a matrix (e.g. with 20 rows, one for each face), the dimensionality of the column space would be six. That is, all 20 faces could be represented by linear combinations of six orthogonal faces.

OP implies that six "eigenfaces" faces represent an eigenbasis for the space of all 20 faces (that they are eigenfaces doesn't necessary imply that they form an eigenbasis, not every vector space has sufficient geometric multiplicity to have an eigenbasis).

It means that the faces can be described using only six uncorrelated parameters. Or to put it another way, there are only six axis of variations. Each face is a combination of the six eigenfaces, but there is still an infinity of different ways to combine these faces, and so an infinity of possible faces.

(Without a comparison to the general population, it's not obvious that 6 is a small number here, so take my "only" 6 cautiously)

I think it only means that each of the 20 faces can be composed from combinations of 6 "basis" faces. I don't know how that compares to the eigenface decomposition of 20 less similar people, I would imagine it is more a byproduct of the process itself than something meaningful?

It's not a racial thing. See these translated Korean netizen comments: http://netizenbuzz.blogspot.com/2013/04/foreign-media-outlet...

> 1. [+238, -4] They look the same even in our eyes, I can't imagine in the eyes of foreigners... -,.-

> 2. [+234, -9] ㅋㅋㅋㅋ I thought all the faces were ctrl + C and ctrl + V with just the shirts changed. They should be ashamed of getting plastic surgery, how could they even think of entering a beauty contest? Seems like plastic surgeons can surgically remove shame now as well..

> 4. [+31, -1] Just turn Miss Korea into an exhibition contest for plastic surgeons

> 5. [+18, -2] I'm so embarrassed... They should make sure in the next Miss Korea that they only allow natural girls

> 10. [+17, -0] That's why they're called 'docturnal twins'. Twins made by plastic surgery doctors.

The problem is that "they all look the same" is actually a factual observation about how our brains recognize faces. So, if you label it as a "racist trope" you end up implying that racism is part of human nature... which I'm sure is not what you want.

This experiment doesn't seem to be positing at all Koreans look the same but rather that all Korean beauty contestants look he same. The implication being, not that Koreans look similar to each other, but that they have similar standards of beauty. Apparently, most of these women have had plastic surgery so they all seem to have the same ideal when it comes to their face. I'd like to see a Brazilian (another country with a large plastic surgery industry) equivalent to see if it's the same.

When it's actually got a foundation in math, it stops being a racist trope and becomes a valid scientific inquiry.

Sexist? Overly sensitive would be one word for it.

> And perhaps also a bit sexist? I dunno, maybe I'm overly sensitive.

Well we are talking about Korea. You would probably have a heart attack if you watched even 60 seconds of Kpop.

it's called an ahjumma perm.