Color-sketch simulator: A guide for color-based visual known-item search

Abstract

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of a color-sketch retrieval system for a given multimedia database, tedious evaluations involving real users are required as users are in the center of query sketch formulation. However, without any prior knowledge about the bottlenecks of the underlying sketch-based retrieval model, the evaluations may focus on wrong settings and thus miss the desired effect. Furthermore, users have usually no clues or recommendations to draw color-sketches effectively. In this paper, we aim at a preliminary analysis to identify potential bottlenecks of a flexible color-sketch retrieval model. We present a formal framework based on position-color feature signatures, enabling comprehensive simulations of users drawing a color sketch.