A method and system for learning-based assessment of the quality of an image is provided. An image quality assessment system trains an image classifier based on a training set of sample images that have quality ratings. To train the classifier, the assessment system generates a feature vector for each sample image representing various attributes of the image. The assessment system may train the classifier using an adaptive boosting technique to calculate a quality score for an image. Once the classifier is trained, the assessment system may calculate the quality of an image by generating a feature vector for that image and applying the trained classifier to the feature vector to calculate the quality score for the image.