« Quick, Easy Access to Bare Hard Drives | Home | IntelliScanner Mini Makes Fast Work of Collection Cataloging »
iPhoto ‘09 – Putting Faces Through Its Paces
By Dave Peterson | January 28, 2009
I spent last night installing iLife ‘09 and trying out the Faces facial recognition feature in the new version of iPhoto. The usability in the application is excellent. I’m a terrible one for reading instructions. My preference is to just jump in and see how much of a device or piece of software I can figure out with the controls and options presented. iPhoto passed this test quite well, and I was immediately able to start working with the Faces feature, without mis-steps.
The question most people are interested in hearing about is, how good is the facial recognition? In a lot of cases, really good. But the farther the angle strays from straight on, the tougher a time the software has. On the same person, if given a straight on shot, it did quite well. It even did reasonably well identifying a face on a quarter-turn left or right. It has real problems with profiles. I taught it several almost identical shots of the same face in profile, but it could not apply that to other profile shots of the same person taken at the same time. It seems to have a strong sense that two eyes (open or closed) are required for a face.
A person wearing glasses can also give some false matches as the software identifies other people also wearing glasses with the bespectacled face it has learned.
This should not be taken as a panning of the functionality. Given what’s being attempted, the success rate is very, very good. So good, that it’s easy to forget what a tricky thing is being done, causing expectation of more nearly perfect results. For a first generation of this feature in iPhoto, I’m very impressed.
Topics: Applications | 2 Comments »
January 29th, 2009 at 5:29 am
Can you download and install iLife 09 or do the send it to you in the mail?
January 29th, 2009 at 11:33 am
It’s only available as physical media, not as a download. You can order it online from Apple or Amazon, or pick it up at an Apple Store, Best Buy, or any other place you normally get Apple software.