Yahoo Labs Finds Filtered Photos Are More Popular

A new paper from Yahoo Labs “Why We Filter Our Photos and How It Impacts Engagement” delves into its findings after analyzing 7.6million photos on Flickr. They found that filters boost engagement on Flickr.

Thanks to social photo sharing apps the majority of the photos we seem to see these days on the internet have been filtered. Filtered photos sure have their haters, but love them or hate them they are here to stay. Yahoo Labs found that photos that are filtered are 21% more likely to be viewed than their original and 45% more likely to be commented on.

Yahoo Labs even found that warmer filters boost engagement more than cooler filters. So now you know if you want your photos to be a bit more popular always go for warm filters. They even were able to nail down that casual shooters tend to use heavy filtering while more experienced photographers generally use filters that have a light effect. So the takeaway is if you don’t want to look like a casual photographer you need to use filters that lightly enhance the photos, not change them drastically. It sure is an interesting point, as it wouldn’t have occurred to me that choosing a filter made that much difference to how others give it their attention.