Researchers develop one-click "Beauty Machine"

How would you like to transform yourself into someone worthy of being on the cover of "Vogue" magazine with a simple click of a button? Researchers out of Tel Aviv University have developed a mathematical algorithm that can instantly beautify any man or woman, according to LiveScience.

Lead researcher Daniel Cohen-Or of the Blavatnik School of Computer Sciences at Tel Aviv University developed the algorithm by asking 68 men and women, ages 25-40, to rank the beauty of 93 different men's and women's facial features. Each person was rated on a scale of 1 to 7, and then the results were compiled in a database that distinguished 250 different facial features and measurements.

Check out sample before and after photos over at LiveScience's image gallery. 

"Beauty, contrary to what most people think, is not simply in the eye of the beholder," said Cohen-Or. "Beauty can be quantified by mathematical measurements and ratios. It can be defined as average distances between features, which a majority of people agree are the most beautiful," he said. "I don't claim to know much about beauty. For us, every picture in this research project is just a collection of numbers."

There are industries where this software would be a hit, obviously. For instance, air-brushing celebrities after a cover shoot would merely take seconds, or the algorithm could be incorporated into digital cameras for an instant beautifying effect. 

However, the software oddly doesn't seem to work very well with celebrities. Cohen-Or believes that the general public is already used to seeing a celebrity in a certain, specific way, whereas an unfamiliar face always yielded positive results.

If a one-click beautifying-effect was available as a feature on a future digicam, would you go out of your way to purchase it? Or do you believe technology like this is just fueling an obsession with beauty?

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

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