Epitome - A Social Game for Photo Album Summarization

In this paper, we propose an approach for photo album summarization through a novel social game "Epitome" for mobile phones. Our approach to album summarization consists of two games: "Select the Best!" and "Split it!". The goal of the first game is to allow a user to select the most representative photo of a reduced set of images, while in the second game, the user has to split the reduced set into two distinct parts. As it could be time-consuming to look at a huge collection of photos on a mobile phone, it is more enjoyable and pleasant to show only a limited number of images which can be fit into one mobile screen. The results obtained in these games are combined to produce a summarization and are then compared with the results of other users. As a final result, a unique summarization sequence of photos is determined. The determined sequence of photos can be used to create a collage of one album or a cover for an album. The proof of concept of the proposed method is demonstrated through a set of experiments on several photo collections.