In this blog post, I outline a new theory for how shape perception works in pictures, specifically, how we interpret perspective. The ideas I present here can describe, at a high level, how it is that we have so many different ways to make realistic pictures, and that we can understand them. It combines ideas from human vision science, art history, and computational photography.| Aaron Hertzmann’s blog
When do pictures look distorted, and what can we do about it? I’m not talking about “optical distortion”—flaws in lens optics—I’m talking about the perception of distortion. We seem to have a sense of when an object “looks right” or “wrong.” For example, here’s a photo I took with my smartphone:| Aaron Hertzmann’s blog