A website I frequent leads me to click on articles from the British website The Daily Mail. One thing that had me curious about the site is that pictures on the site have a small popup appear next to them that identifies an article of clothing the picture subject is wearing. It includes a name of the garment, name of the retailer you can purchase it from and the cost. Of course it is linked to a website you can purchase said item.
What I can’t figure out is if computer recognition had gotten so good that it can pick out an article of clothing, identify it and give you all the information I’ve listed above or if this "feature"is being done manually. If it’s being done manually it amazes me that there are people that are that knowledgeable to be able to id so many random articles of clothing.
You can use the idea with tineye or google image search, with the condition that your picture is ONLY the one item with very tiny amounts of background, and that the item was also on some other website, in a similar picture… You see the apps specific to clothing would identify the item of clothing and ignore the background…
( for google, go to google ,image, but don’t type in the description, instead click on the camera icon and paste in a URL of a picture ! )
But that gives me ideas… well google will do it as soon as someone else does, I suppose, and claim the patent too
They don’t need to knowledgeable – they just look at the label in the clothes when they take the picture.
That info is supplied to the paper along with the photo, by the advertising agency/photographer hired by the seller.
This sort of thing has been around forever, You can see it as caption footnotes to most of the big fashion photos in magazines. The only new thing is putting it in the popup on a webpage photo. It’s common for most photos of anything shown in magazines that is for sale – my brother’s motorcycle and gun magqzines both have such descriptions as photo captions!
Well, this is what I originally thought, however I’ve seen the popups on pictures that were taken “in the wild”, meaning not in A studio, but paparazzi type shots or pictures from events. Anyways, really not a big deal, I was just wondering if computers had gotten advanced enough to randomly id clothing. If so, that’s pretty amazing.
I suspect it’s still ‘initiated’ by the company selling those clothes.
They provide the clothes to a ‘celebrity’, have them appear at public events, even assign a photographer to get good pictures showing them in the clothes, and then someone from the company makes sure the maker & retailers are identified in a popup.
In the UK, this is common with members of the aristocracy (especially if any royal family connections) – remember the photos of clothes & hats at the Ascott races? Here in America, it’s usually entertainers (actors/actresses, singers, etc.) who do that.
I doubt it could be done by computer, because I don’t think there would be enough info in a photo to distinguish the name brand item from the JC Penney knock-off. When I worked in a clothing store (40 years ago) the differences between the high quality brands and the cheap ones were mostly visible only close-up, where you could examine the quality of the material & the workmanship. That wouldn’t show in an event photo.
That reminds me – how do we know these popup identifications are accurate, anyway? What would stop a clothing manufacturer from putting a popup on any photo with an article of clothing that resembles one they sell, identifying it as their brand and linking to their retailers? You can certainly hire PR firms that will insert fake good reviews & ratings of your product all over the internet. This wouldn’t be that much of a stretch from that.
Are you sure they’re linking to the same clothes? Or is it more like “here is a link where you too can buy a yellow shirt”?
I know back when I read magazines regularly, they would have a fashion spread that approximated the outfits the cool band wore in their feature article a couple of pages back. But despite the fact that the clothes laid out were similar to those the band wore (but not exactly the same), I’m pretty sure Kurt Cobain wasn’t paying Dolce & Gabbana $180 for his flannel shirts.
Meh. Easy to do, mainly because things are dark/subconscious and way open to interpretation. Even mimicking an ego isn’t all that impressive. Call me when a computer can emulate a super-ego.
