Another unexpected factor that can rule out a photo for selection: being too interesting of a shot. By design, the ambient screensaver photos are all meant to feel cohesive and fade into the background. “Images that are too exciting kind of defeat the purpose of being in the background and being a calm ambient photo,” says Alvin. To that end, black and white photos, or pictures with very high dynamic ranges or high contrast are also usually eliminated, since they can be distractingly bright on HDR TV screens.
The judging panel consists of six to seven volunteers, to ensure a diverse taste of what constitutes a “good” photo. To actually choose the photos, each judge begins by selecting finalists from the albums that Googlers have submitted. Then, they gather together and rate the pictures (for added fairness, the judges can’t see the names of the Googlers who submitted each photo) with either a thumbs up, neutral or a thumbs down; to be selected, a photo needs to have gotten at least one thumbs up and no thumbs down, with about 50 or 60 photos a year making the cut.
