Systems and methods are provided for identifying a subset of exemplar images in a set of exemplary images that may be used to generate an image classifier having one or more desirable performance characteristics. A computing system may select every possible subset of exemplar images from a set of exemplar images and may generate a classifier for each selected subset of images. The computing system may use each generated classifier to classify one or more images in order to generate performance statistics related to how each classifier performed when classifying the one or more images. The computing system may identify a particular subset of exemplar images that is associated with performance statistics of a classifier that satisfies one or more desired performance characteristics.