1. A method, comprising: determining respective models of visual weight in images, wherein each model of visual weight comprises a respective set of parameters defining a centroid of visual weight of the respective image as a whole and a spread of visual weight in the respective image about the centroid; for each of the images: identifying areas of the image highest in visual appeal, wherein the identifying, comprises for each of the images: segmenting the image into regions; assigning a respective visual appeal score to each of the regions; and thresholding the image quality scores; building the respective model of visual weight in the image to approximate a distribution of the identified area of the image; generating an image query from a determined visual weight distribution; and retrieving at least one of the images from a database based on comparison of the image query with respective ones of the visual weight models.