While the #NoFilter hashtag has been growing in popularity to be able catch more likes and comments from other users that will appreciate the lack of photo filters on uploaded images, a study shows the exact opposite.
According to the joint study by the Georgia Institute of Technology and Yahoo Labs, photos with filters are more likely to receive comments by 45 percent and are more likely to be viewed by 21 percent.
The study finds that using warm filters on pictures will significantly increase the likelihood of receiving comments, while increasing the exposure of images is the strongest factor in increasing views.
On the other hand, ageing effects was found to slightly increase views, but at the expense of decreased comments. Saturation filters have been found to increase comments, but have little effect on increasing views.
The effects of the filters were included in the study while taking into account the number of followers of the users that uploaded the images and the popularity of the photo stream.
"In color theory, warm colors such as red and yellow are known to elicit feelings of arousal and cheerfulness, and our results seem to echo this," wrote the authors in their report.
The study involved 7.6 million pictures from Flickr, over 50 percent of which are cross-posted on Instagram.
The report also studied the motivation of people to use filters in their pictures, with findings revealing that the motivation for casual photographers is to share the images, with the filters used to transform the pictures they take. Serious photographers, however, utilize filters to be able to correct mistakes in pictures or to highlight certain portions of images.
The research paper is the latest entry in the expanding body of research that focuses on the usage of pictures on social media.
The same authors confirmed in a study released last year the popularity of selfies, discovering that pictures of faces attracted higher engagement levels from other users compared to pictures of places.
The study, which analyzed 1.1 million images on Instagram, revealed that pictures of faces were more likely to attract likes by 38 percent and were more likely to get comments by 32 percent.
The number of the faces in the pictures and the gender and age of the subjects, however, had no discernible effect.
