1. A computer-based method of inferring and utilizing the aesthetic quality of photographs and other images, comprising the steps of: receiving a plurality of digitized images along with aesthetic-based ratings of the images provided by viewers of the images; performing one or more software operations on the digitized images to automatically extract a plurality of visual features representative of each image; and using one or more statistical methods to correlate the extracted visual features and the aesthetic-based viewer ratings to classify image on the basis of its aesthetic value, rate image on a scale relating to its aesthetics value, or select/eliminate image based upon aesthetic quality.