Enhancing Portraiture: Analyzing the Gap Between Amateur and Professional Photography to Bridge the Divide for High-Quality Self-Portraits

In this comprehensive research, we meticulously analyzed a dataset of over 1000 images, encompassing both professional and amateur photography. Our results unveiled a striking contrast in the approach of amateur photographers, who tend to emphasize the facial aspect of their subjects, allocating an average of 16.8% of the frame to the face, as compared to professional photographs where the facial area is constrained to just 15% (Figure 2). Additionally, a profound variance in image brightness became evident, with professional images displaying an average brightness of 150.94, while amateurs produced images with a significantly lower average brightness of 131.20 (Figure 3). Simultaneously, professionals excelled in achieving vibrant and saturated colors, reflecting a higher average color tone across all channels, namely Red (R), Green (G), and Blue (B) (Figure 4), with channel ranges documented as R = (195.68, 214.40), G = (115.33, 133.19), and B = (93.90, 109.43). These findings illuminate the pronounced disparities between amateur and professional photography techniques.