Roughly a year after rolling out facial recognition on its Picasa Web Albums site, Google on Tuesday is introducing an updated version of its Picasa software (for Windows | Mac) that can recognize faces in photos stored on users' computers.
Just as it does on the Web, Picasa scans your photos for faces, then groups together photos of specific people. It's then your job to tell it who they are as well as confirm its guesses. If someone you're tagging is in your Google address book, you can also look them up very quickly with auto-complete. Otherwise, Google gives you the option to add them as someone new; this information then gets synced back up your Google address book.
Picasa's software can now scan for faces, and offer up recommendations of people it thinks are your contacts.
(Credit: CNET)The system worked very well for me, but it was slow going. I had to leave the program running overnight for it to finish processing my 3,700 or so photos for faces. It also had my processor humming, since it was doing all the work on my machine instead of Google's giant server farm.
That's not to say Google hasn't included a few things to help speed up the process. For one, if you've got photos that are both hosted online and on your hard drive--and that have already been scanned for faces, the Picasa software can grab that information and add it to your local library. This saves it from having to scan the same photos twice.
And for photos it thinks contain people you've verified as contacts, it gives you quick "yes" and "no" buttons that can add or reject name tags. Oftentimes, clicking "yes" adds a few more suggestions for photos of that person that the program feels is safe enough to recommend. There's also a way to group accept or group decline its suggestions, which saves time you would have otherwise spent clicking the buttons one at a time.
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Now, this is kind of neat: Facebook Connect, the sprawling social network's universal-login project, has started to come to desktop software. Namely, it's been hooked up to the Apple photo-management software iPhoto, per a post on the company developer blog.
"We are excited that sharing your photos with the people you care about has become even easier with iLife '09, Apple's new suite of applications that includes iPhoto '09," the post by Facebook platform manager Dave Morin said. "Users of iPhoto '09 can easily share and tag photos from iPhoto directly to Facebook. With help from Facebook Connect, photo tags from iPhoto '09 can be added to Facebook and generate Facebook notifications. Additionally, Mac users can update Facebook News Feed and alert friends anytime they update their websites using Apple's iWeb '09 application."
Basically, this means that if you're a Mac user running the latest edition of its iLife package, which started shipping earlier this week, you can hook up your Facebook account for easy uploading right from iPhoto. If you use the iWeb site creation tool, you can set it up to post a message to your Facebook profile (and your friends' news feeds) if you make some kind of edit. That's pretty similar to what a number of Web-based blogging services have already set up using Facebook's platform.
I haven't actually checked it out yet, so I can't provide a thumbs up or down, but the concept itself is pretty cool. Facebook rolled out its Facebook Connect product, which lets third-party sites (and now desktop apps, apparently) use Facebook usernames and passwords for user accounts, over the second half of last year. The reception, so far, has been generally positive.
What'll be really interesting is to see the further implications of Web-based login standards like Facebook Connect as they're synced up to more desktop applications. Not that you'd really want to share all your Microsoft Word edits in your news feed or anything.
At Tuesday's Macworld keynote speech, Apple announced a handful of upgrades to existing software. Of the changes, one of the biggest is the budding online integration found inside two of its software suites: iLife and iWork. The "2009" versions of both of these software packages show a more balanced approach by Apple in integrating third-party services alongside pushing users toward its own online efforts.
Apple's 'collaborative' element of iWork revolves around storing the files in an online share called iWork.com. (Click to enlarge.)
(Credit: Apple Inc.)In the case of iWork, is a tight integration with a brand new online component called iWork.com. The site, which launches later this month in conjunction with the software release, lets users upload files for sharing with others--up to 1GB. When using any of the three applications included in the iWork suite users are able to export whatever they're working on right from a link on the top of the screen. Once the item has been uploaded it can be shared with other users who can download it in whatever file formats you specify, or leave little sticky-note comments.
This is far from online word processing solutions offered by Google, Zoho, Thinkfree, and others, but continues in the direction of 2007's photo galleries and Web e-mail applications that were offered as a part of Apple's MobileMe service. Notably missing from this new online service is a way to actually edit the document right in your browser, and instead requires downloading a local copy then re-uploading.
Additionally iLife's iWeb application has been updated with both Facebook and FTP integration. Now, whenever you make changes to your site you can have it send out a notification to your Facebook news feed, letting your friends see that you've made an update. And with the FTP integration there's no more messing about with third-party FTP applications to update changes you've made to an iWeb-created page. You can now simply plug-in your server information and have it sync up.
Apple's Macworld updates
Here's a basic rundown of everything Apple announced Tuesday. For more details, read our summary here.
iTunes
DRM-free and cheaper songs
MacBook Pro
New 8-hour battery
iLife '09
Photo geotagging and music lessons
iWork '09
Online syncing, Keynote Remote
This is going to solve a lot of headaches for people who wanted to use the WYSIWYG site creation software without ponying up to pay Apple to host it for them.
Another big change is in iPhoto, which now offers built-in export support for both Facebook and Flickr--two of the most popular photo-sharing sites on the Web. Exporting to both of these services was previously possible with third-party plug-ins, however Apple's new solution works right out of the box. Any changes you make to uploaded photos within the software will be automatically sent back to these places. This means that you can replace a previously uploaded photo without manually having to visit the site and re-upload.
Still missing from both of these suites is a true online companion. While iWork.com offers a free (for now) way to share big files outside of e-mail, and without the need for a subscription to Apple's MobileMe service, you still have to do all the work on your computer--and your computer only. With the Facebook and Flickr integration you can't pull down photos you've previously uploaded for editing on the software's new editing tools. I'm also sad to see that despite the promising integration with Google Maps in iWeb last year, there's still not a way to import and export from Google Docs and Spreadsheets in Pages and Numbers respectively.
Maybe next year.
Users can now export photos to both Facebook and Flickr right out of the box in the new iPhoto.
(Credit: Apple)Update: I mistakenly said this tool does two-way sync. PhotoCopy currently only moves photos one direction--from iPhoto to Flickr.
Having recently picked up one of the new MacBooks, I've been spending the last few days getting it up to speed with all my Web services and prior storage backups.
One of the biggest hurdles I'm trying to overcome is being too reliant on software, which is considerably easier with today's cloud services.
One that caught my eye on this front is PhotoCopy from 24x7 Digital. This $20 software program, which is Mac-only, hooks up with your iPhoto library and Flickr account, and will keep your Flickr photos synced up with those on your machine--sans any manual uploading on your part. The big idea here is that any changes made on your machine will be quietly handled in the background; this includes rearranging, edits, renaming, and deletion.
This certainly isn't a new idea, but it's a smart one. The latest iteration of Picasa does two-way sync with your Picasa Web albums, which can be a great way to restore a huge photo collection, if your hard drive goes kaput. Hopefully, future versions will do two-way sync, and support Apple's higher-end photo management tool, Aperture, along with other Web photo hosts.
Note: If you were planning to use the PhotoCopy free 30-day trial, it adds a watermark to each synced-up image until you've registered, so be careful.
[via Macworld]
You can pick which iPhoto albums you want synced up. The tool also lets you pick a resizing level, in case you don't want to upload giant versions of your professional shots.
(Credit: 24x7 Digital)
.Mac, the popular Web services suite from Apple is getting an update this morning. Among the newer features is a much-needed upgrade to .Mac's Web photo gallery service, which now ties in with the freshly updated iPhoto '08 and the iPhone. Users will also be able to upload photos to their online galleries via a specialized e-mail address. The new iPhone integration mirrors some of the options that are already in place to shuttle off photos from the device, with a new option to "send to Web gallery," which lets you send photos to their.Mac Web gallery, and their friends who have allowed the option in their own Web galleries.
Also of note, the updated Web galleries will work with movies made with iMovie '08. There's also a new option right in iMovie '08 to send the video straight to YouTube.
We're not seeing anything revolutionary here that hasn't been done on other services such as Flickr and Zooomr, but it does look pretty slick. The one big catch is that you have to be a .Mac subscriber to take advantage of these galleries. This is a nice plus if you use the service, but it's hardly a competitor to other photo services that are open to everyone. The one real surprise from this morning is the storage bump from 1GB to 10GB, which is necessary when you're splitting that space between e-mail, photos, and videos.
Update: To take a look at a Web gallery yourself, Apple has posted an example here. Keep in mind it might be a little slow today, since a lot of people are hitting the page at the same time.
(Credit:
Apple.com)
Picnik is a really slick piece of Webware for tweaking and editing photos. You can pull in photos from any URL or upload them from your home computer. There are a variety of basic photo editing tools like cropping, resizing, red-eye correction, and a handy auto-fix button to make a picture look better without fussing around with each setting.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
When you're done tweaking your photo you've got a few options. You can save it to your hard drive, print it, e-mail it or even publish it if you've authorized Picnik to sync up to your online photo service. Picnik lets you use a number of photo hosting services like Flickr, ImageShack and PhotoBucket. Also cool is the ability to send your photo to Costco Photos (where I often get prints made.)
Picnik is very responsive. Any changes made to a photo are almost instantaneous. This is helpful with the rotation tool, as you don't have to wait for your shot to render on-screen. There's also a special effects menu which features a few instant presets like sepia, black and white, and color boost. These presets let you make quick and dramatic changes to your photos.
Picnik, like Fauxto (which we covered last month), is a great way to get creative without having to install anything on your machine. The export options are really well thought out and completely intuitive for novice users. The sliders and quick pre-sets remind me a lot of Picasa's edit interface, but have some of the more powerful features you might find in the most recent version of Apple's iPhoto. Give it a whirl here.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
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