Apple’s Phil Schiller announced at the Steveless keynote at Macworld today (CrunchGear is liveblogging it) that a new version of iPhoto will include facial recognition software. The feature, called Faces, lets you put a name to face, then it tries to find other images with the same face and lets you confirm whether the software got it right. I really hopes this works, because I simply don’t have time to tag the 7,000 images in my iPhoto, 5,000 of which are probably one of my sons. iPhoto will also automatically generate albums that contain photos of the faces you select. Facial recognition is a hard problem to solve. I’ll believe it when I see it.
iPhoto is also adding a feature called Places, which lets you geotag photos or uses the GPS coordinates if they are available. There is a map view now that shows where you’ve taken all of your photos with pins on a map (powered by Google Maps). It is also finally supporting Flickr and Facebook uploading (hopefully, with automatic resizing). Yes, Apple, we want our photos on the Web, where more people can see them. But what’s nice is that the geotags sync with Flickr, and if someone adds a tag on Facebook to one of your photos it syncs back.
I like this direction because Apple is turning iPhoto into a true Webtop app. It should take a look at Fotonauts, which was founded by former Apple technologist Jean-Marie Huillot and is pushing the envelope in this area . Fotonauts lets you turn each album into a Webpage without an expensive Me.com account, and makes it easy to build a social community around each album.
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Picasa which just launched a beta for the Mac already has facial recognition software the works pretty good. You should check that out.
should simply dropped a link
Create or join a crunchie’s chat group at http://groups.im/
Yeah I must say iPhoto is definitely a bitch. That’s why I usually just use photobucket.
Can the recognition feature be turned off or do I need to start blushing when my ex girlfriend’s face gets put in the same group as my moms?
Yes, Picasa web albums has good facial recognition.
But what sets it apart is the tagging method. If you have TONS of photos and want to tag faces, Picasa web albums has the most efficient process I’ve seen. It’s light years ahead of Facebook’s tagging process.
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what are you trying to say?
try to comment
What a lame event this year. The best thing was 4chan messing with macrumors, the rest was dull.
At http://www.trutoon.com you can extract your face from your photo and create some fun avatars with your own face to post at myspace, facebook, bebo and more!
Geotagging… Built-in Flickr support… Finally…
The scary bit is when facial recognition hits internet ! One would think I can tag a photo (face) as say “John” and then you can Google images for the John’s face? Imagine what all places John’s face might show up and if it is a good thing.
Its probably good for private investigators or girlfriends to research on their boyfriends before they get “serious”. But in a general context it could be the scariest nightmare. What say?
great stuff. happy about flickr.
Picasa already has face recognition that works pretty well.
If I’m not mistaken live search also use face recognition.