Statistical measures of visual interest

This salad captures many aspects of what makes a Pinterest image popular, according to researchers. The features they mention, however (lack of faces, proportions, color) are features it is easy to measure with current image processing algorithms. They don't take into account any of the meaning of what is in the picture. For example, it includes food, which is a popular topic on Pinterest. Any method of trying to understand what people like that ignores the semantics of the image is going to be very limited.