Playing around with iPhoto's 'Faces'
Face recognition technology isn't perfect yet.
That's certainly clear when using the "Faces" feature that is built into the recently released iPhoto '09.
Memo to iPhoto: Former colleague Joris Evers may be a great guy, but he's not the Great One.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News)Sure, the product does reasonably well at finding your friends and family in your photo collection. Tag a few photos by name and iPhoto comes up with other suggestions, often recognizing photos that are taken years apart and with vastly different looks. Heck, iPhoto even spotted me when I was a different gender.
The science behind face recognition is complex and still evolving. In general, face recognition software looks for predictable patterns--characteristics and proportions that stay constant from one photograph to another, things like the distance between the eyes or from the eyes to the mouth.
Even with things where the science is today, having help--any help--with the tedious task of tagging photos is welcome. And iPhoto can certainly find plenty of matches in your library, even if it won't spot them all.
But the real genius part is how Apple has made the process fun, even when the results aren't perfect.
Early speech recognition was also hit or miss, but it was painful to have to scream at a computer while it constantly misunderstood what you were trying to say. With face recognition, at least as built into iPhoto, the goofs are what make it fun.
The software frequently suggested that my contemporary friends and family were actually my 80-something cousin, my 90-something great aunt, or both. iPhoto also confused Bill Gates with our friend's 3-year-old. And among the suggestions for former CNET colleague Joris Evers was a shot of Wayne Gretzky that I had taken at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.
My favorite, though, was when iPhoto was trying to find other photos of my friend Rachel and included a picture of a lemur from a zoo in Sweden.
To be fair, iPhoto starts off with what seem like sure matches and then tries to loosen things up a bit to find more matches. Often as one gets to the bottom of the list of suggestions there are more misses than hits.
But no matter how far off iPhoto is, it just takes two clicks to tell iPhoto it's off base (and one to confirm the photo is indeed who iPhoto predicted).
The process for tagging photos is somewhat addictive. After confirming a few photos, one can go back to the Faces index page and Apple will come up with more suggestions, seemingly refined by the latest tagging efforts.
I think I would like the Faces feature better if it were more accurate, but I'm not sure. I certainly hope Apple never gets it too perfect. Then I'd have to find something else to harass my friends about.
AUDIO
Face time with iPhoto '09
CNET News reporter Ina Fried tells editor Leslie Katz how iPhoto '09's face recognition fared during a test run.
Download mp3 (2.35MB)
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
If Ina's gender identity or the fact that it has changed makes you uncomfortable, I suggest you avoid her articles.
If you are uncomfortable or shocked, then that is your problem. Maybe you should consider working it. Ina does not have to hide who she is just to make you or anyone else feel comfortable. She is fine the way she is.
Stating your opinion as indisputable does not make it true and I don't see how you can have the authority to speak for all of "society" whatever that is. Mid-Atlantic society? North American society? Polynesian society? Which one have you studied and know so well that you can make indisputable pronouncements regarding its comfortableness on changing one's sex? I'm with Hep Cat - I think you're simply making public your own uncomfortableness with what (in my opinion) is now a routine medical procedure.
Frankly, I thought it was rather interesting that the new iPhoto could detect Ina's face as either sex. Rather than being off-topic to subject of the article as you suggest, I considered this an intriguing aspect of the software which I'd not seen raised elsewhere.
By the way, all this is my own opinion. I do not necessarily speak for World Society, or even my local neighborhood - now that's truly indisputable.
I'm not even going to ask what it was a picture of...!!!
ROFL...!! :)
Ina, you articles never fail to amuse me.
While I congratulate you on your openness, maybe a little more... subtlety, is in order? Surely TWO references in a single article (one of them being pretty relevant) is a bit much?
Now to the actual article: I don't care about facial recognition.
The article (correctly named 'playing with') indirectly points out the real problem - there is nothing to directly compare this application with. I suppose you could compare their face recognition with Google and MS's online versions just to test the technology.
The differences are minuscule iPhoto, it finds a face, and makes a suggestion, if(big IF) it is right, you click a button otherwise you have to click a few buttons to get it right. Live Photo Gallery it finds a face and you click a button, the only difference is it has less involved the majority of the time.
I paid 80 bucks for an upgrade to iLife, after watching the keynote. Fool me once.
Ever.
Unless you're Shakespeare.
Can't believe you deign to speak for "society" or at least the family-values society my wife and two young children are part of. Seems like you are the one wound up in "personal agendas", sniping at something that you don't seem ready to tolerate in the open. Ina's reference was certainly central and germane to this review of facial recognition accuracy.
BTW - cool software.
- by mMehdij August 2, 2009 10:48 PM PDT
- please tell me about a windows software that work the same as its face recognition.
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