As a concluding chapter in our partnership with Microsoft for the Fresh Perspectives project, they have curated something special to connect users artistically. In this final stage, Richard Wors of Microsoft has created an algorithm to allow Facebook users to create a piece of art using their Profile Pic as inspiration. Read more about Paint Your Profile below.
First, the user’s Facebook profile picture is loaded in the background. Then, the average color of that image is determined, the saturation is boosted and a blend mode is applied to a white, tan or black image chosen at random. A list of the user’s friends is pulled and a fractal typographic treatment is created in which the color of their friends name corresponds with a color value relative to the position of the photo that is hidden from the user. Additional Facebook data is pulled to reveal something interesting about the user that they may not know, such as most/least social friend (based on how much wall activity they have), oldest/youngest friend, average age of friends, or friend with the longest/shortest name…
After the data is pulled, one of a few different styles of brush is pulled and tied to the above data, and uses the user’s profile image to pull color. Once the image is completed, the user has a unique blueprint of a his or her social presence on Facebook.
You can login to Paint Your Profile right here & make sure to checkout the short clip at Fresh Perspectives to learn how it works. Hit the jump to view some examples.
