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Opinions of iPhoto 09 facial recognition accuracy?
- Thread starter big_malk
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i find it works pretty well. I tagged myself in a handful of pics and it found 95% of all the pictures of me (over 500) some of me now (bald) some with long hair., some of me as a baby in my dads arms - which was scarily impressive but then i realised it must be because my dad and I look a like and was just saying it thought I was 'in' the photo - and some of me sat in the back of a car through the windscreen passenger windscreen. I was stunningly impressed. As I went on to tag more of my friends and family it wasn't quite as good, but still very accurate. Maybe it depends on just the way the photos are taken? Angles of faces and half turned heads seem to confuse it the most.
I was expecting a bit more than what I got from that facial recognition in iPhoto 09. This blog post covers my experiences pretty good:
http://www.trick77.com/2009/01/28/iphoto-09-face-detection-not-very-advanced/
The main issue is it misses a lot (!!!) of faces. Tagging an unknown face is way easier than adding a missed face.
http://www.trick77.com/2009/01/28/iphoto-09-face-detection-not-very-advanced/
The main issue is it misses a lot (!!!) of faces. Tagging an unknown face is way easier than adding a missed face.
All in all, I personally think it works very well. I agree it does miss some easy photos (which makes no sense to me), however, it is amazing it how well it detects a child's face from newborn through pre-school age. The tagging process is pretty easy, too. I tagged 3,000+ photos of 16 different people in just a couple hours.
They all use Mac Pros at CTU maybe they have iPhoto Extreme that Apple will release mid year for another £69
The face recognition is working exponentially well for me as iPhoto "learns."
I went through and chose about 20 good straight on photos of each of my 3 kids at various ages (out of around 3000 photos of each of them). The first pass on "confirming names" on my 7 year old daughter Charlotte was correct on about 75% including photos down to her baby years. About 20% were actually my 11 year old Cameron son at various ages, and I'd have to agree with iPhoto, they do look alike. The other 5% seemed completely random, a few strangers in the background, cousins, etc. A few times it did pick Charlotte out of the crowd, like a group shot of 20 little girls at a dance recital...BOOM, found her!
After going through iPhoto's suggestions and clicking "Charlotte" or "Not Charlotte", then doing a run through on photos iPhoto thought "Might be Cameron"...there were only 11 out of over 1500 incorrect!! Many pictures were out of focus, faces turned sideways or upside down, several pictures of just eyes and foreheads and just a handful of false calls from babyhood to the present. iPhoto even amusingly picked up faces in framed pictures sitting in the background of the actual photo (and correctly identified them).
Looks like "teaching" iPhoto by going through a few iterations of "Bob" or "not Bob" will result in an amazing level of accuracy. I expect once I'm through doing this for my existing photos, it will recognize faces in future imports flawlessly.
I went through and chose about 20 good straight on photos of each of my 3 kids at various ages (out of around 3000 photos of each of them). The first pass on "confirming names" on my 7 year old daughter Charlotte was correct on about 75% including photos down to her baby years. About 20% were actually my 11 year old Cameron son at various ages, and I'd have to agree with iPhoto, they do look alike. The other 5% seemed completely random, a few strangers in the background, cousins, etc. A few times it did pick Charlotte out of the crowd, like a group shot of 20 little girls at a dance recital...BOOM, found her!
After going through iPhoto's suggestions and clicking "Charlotte" or "Not Charlotte", then doing a run through on photos iPhoto thought "Might be Cameron"...there were only 11 out of over 1500 incorrect!! Many pictures were out of focus, faces turned sideways or upside down, several pictures of just eyes and foreheads and just a handful of false calls from babyhood to the present. iPhoto even amusingly picked up faces in framed pictures sitting in the background of the actual photo (and correctly identified them).
Looks like "teaching" iPhoto by going through a few iterations of "Bob" or "not Bob" will result in an amazing level of accuracy. I expect once I'm through doing this for my existing photos, it will recognize faces in future imports flawlessly.
I had a fun incident where iPhoto's facial recognition found my dad when I was looking for more pictures of myself. But it also found my cousine(female) in the same run. It didn't find all pictures of me so I must have changed greatly over the years.
Overall I didn't have a successful run with the facial recognition. Had to manually type in my name and other family member's names on each photo almost.
Overall I didn't have a successful run with the facial recognition. Had to manually type in my name and other family member's names on each photo almost.
I agree, it sucks! It doesn't even seem to be learning that well. I hope they'll release an update soon.
I think being the age I am (21) and having pictures mainly of people my age but covering well over 5 years in the past means iLife struggles to keep up with the slightly changing faces and drastically different haircuts and such.
I've already found it detects a face that I would say is clearly me, offers it up as a suggestion for someone else but not for me. Which is a bit odd.
It's okay I suppose, but nowhere near competent enough to stop me from (slowly) going through every picture in my library tagging. Which is gonna take ages
I've already found it detects a face that I would say is clearly me, offers it up as a suggestion for someone else but not for me. Which is a bit odd.
It's okay I suppose, but nowhere near competent enough to stop me from (slowly) going through every picture in my library tagging. Which is gonna take ages
iPhoto certainly has an easier time of detecting some people over others. Some of my friends were recognized instantly, and scarily at times (obscured, in the background, etc), while others were seemingly ignored.
Since the recognition feature does fail quite a bit in this iteration, I would have liked to see better keyboard navigation when it's asking you:
1) to confirm a person's identity -- "Is this so-and-so?" makes it look like the checkbox can be dismissed by hitting the space bar, but it needs a mouse click,
2) if there are multiple faces in a photo, you have to click once elsewhere in the photo to take away focus from the name tags before you can advance to the next photo with the arrow keys,
3) in the Confirm Name screen, it takes 2 mouse clicks on each photo to toggle it to the "Not so-and-so" state (although I'm not sure if that state means anything different to the recognition algorithm than just leaving the guess alone).
There's way too much dependence on the mouse, and my trackpad clicking thumb hurt after a few hundred photos.
Edit: oh, but I was pleased at first when it managed to detect my dog's face, and then was laughing out loud when it tried to match her in: a) a group of buildings, 2) a team member swimming butterfly, and 3) an ornamental frieze of Louis XIV at Versailles!
Since the recognition feature does fail quite a bit in this iteration, I would have liked to see better keyboard navigation when it's asking you:
1) to confirm a person's identity -- "Is this so-and-so?" makes it look like the checkbox can be dismissed by hitting the space bar, but it needs a mouse click,
2) if there are multiple faces in a photo, you have to click once elsewhere in the photo to take away focus from the name tags before you can advance to the next photo with the arrow keys,
3) in the Confirm Name screen, it takes 2 mouse clicks on each photo to toggle it to the "Not so-and-so" state (although I'm not sure if that state means anything different to the recognition algorithm than just leaving the guess alone).
There's way too much dependence on the mouse, and my trackpad clicking thumb hurt after a few hundred photos.
Edit: oh, but I was pleased at first when it managed to detect my dog's face, and then was laughing out loud when it tried to match her in: a) a group of buildings, 2) a team member swimming butterfly, and 3) an ornamental frieze of Louis XIV at Versailles!
Two suggestions for future upgrade:
(1) Add a Faces option to Smart Albums. I thought this would be a given, and planned to use it to cross-check Faces accuracy. I had already tagged all my photos using Keywords with people's names, so I thought I would be one-up on helping iPhoto learn, and being able to identify false-positives and false-negatives. But there is no option to make a Smart Album based on whose Face is in the picture.
(2) In the Faces info box, have a field for the person's birthdate (or hook it into Address Book). Then the Faces algorithm would have no reason to even look at photos dated before the person was born, and wouldn't mistake my 11 year-old's baby photos for the other kids.
(1) Add a Faces option to Smart Albums. I thought this would be a given, and planned to use it to cross-check Faces accuracy. I had already tagged all my photos using Keywords with people's names, so I thought I would be one-up on helping iPhoto learn, and being able to identify false-positives and false-negatives. But there is no option to make a Smart Album based on whose Face is in the picture.
(2) In the Faces info box, have a field for the person's birthdate (or hook it into Address Book). Then the Faces algorithm would have no reason to even look at photos dated before the person was born, and wouldn't mistake my 11 year-old's baby photos for the other kids.
Working Very Well Here
I had great success getting iPhoto to recognize faces.
It was able to walk me through several thousand photos pretty quickly, learning as it went (with my help, of course). It was easily able to round up my 2yr-old's photos from the day she was born to today.
We did have some times where it confused me with someone else wearing glasses, or one baby with another baby, but it learned quickly as I told it that photo "x" was not a particular person.
I think it is a great feature that works very well.
I had great success getting iPhoto to recognize faces.
It was able to walk me through several thousand photos pretty quickly, learning as it went (with my help, of course). It was easily able to round up my 2yr-old's photos from the day she was born to today.
We did have some times where it confused me with someone else wearing glasses, or one baby with another baby, but it learned quickly as I told it that photo "x" was not a particular person.
I think it is a great feature that works very well.
I might be wrong as that I just bought it (and I'm back at work now, so can't test it), but:
1) There is a way to keyboard navigate everything, I was doing it earlier. It might be the down arrow key to navigate to "not 'so-and-so'" and then Enter to confirm, not sure about that, though.
2) I thought Tab moved between photos and the arrow keys moved between pictures. So that no matter if you were on a specific "Face", the arrow keys would always move you to the next photo.
3) If you highlight all the pictures (using the little drag-box thingy), they'll all go to "Confirm." Then you simply just have to single click each picture you want to change to not 'so-and-so' and leave all the pictures you want to confirm alone.
I find Faces to be really accurate, even though my little brother is pretty much my twin. It can still tell the differences. Although it did think I was my grandmother.
I spent a bit of time 'teaching' it, and it's pretty good now.
Let it be known that Faces is racist. I have many Asian friends, and I tagged one of them, and it thought every single Asian person in my library was her.
I spent a bit of time 'teaching' it, and it's pretty good now.
Let it be known that Faces is racist. I have many Asian friends, and I tagged one of them, and it thought every single Asian person in my library was her.
Meh
When I first started using faces, I thought that it was great!
However, the further along I got and the more of my pictures I went through, I realized that it really isn't that great. First of all, I was really disappointed in how many photos the feature simple did not detect all or even any faces in, even though many of the faces that were missed were very clearly in view. It's also rather inconsistent in odd ways. One photo of my mom did not have any faces detected, whereas the next photo of her right after did detect her face - but someone's hand was covering half of it! Also I've run across many instances where iPhoto detects faces where there are none - cloudy skies, pumpkin guts, rock walls, and many hub caps. This is to be expected I guess, but is frustrating when there are clearly faces in these pictures that it is not detecting at all!
As for actually putting names to the faces it's recognizing, it seems to do an okay job. For most people, I really can tell that iPhoto is learning and gets it right often enough. I was also impressed that it was able to match my face from current pictures all the way down to a picture of me when I was 2 (I'm 23 now) (but it still missed a lot of photos of me anyway). However it still had big problems with some people. One of my friends whom I think is pretty recognizable is a real Faces "wilde card" - he is almost NEVER recognized by iPhoto but he comes up as a suggestion for nearly everyone - guy or girl. Also one of my friends, a girl who has a slender, sharp-featured face, was getting a funny face suggestion - a picture of a storm trooper from star wars.
So the actual name to face matching works okay at best, but when I realized that if I really want to have everything tagged correctly that I would have to go through every one of my thousand photos (find faces that were missed, delete recognized faces that are not faces), it doesn't make it a very worthwhile feature, at least not in its current state. I can also see that this feature could be neatly expanded into other OS X apps and it will be interesting to see if and how they do this.
When I first started using faces, I thought that it was great!
However, the further along I got and the more of my pictures I went through, I realized that it really isn't that great. First of all, I was really disappointed in how many photos the feature simple did not detect all or even any faces in, even though many of the faces that were missed were very clearly in view. It's also rather inconsistent in odd ways. One photo of my mom did not have any faces detected, whereas the next photo of her right after did detect her face - but someone's hand was covering half of it! Also I've run across many instances where iPhoto detects faces where there are none - cloudy skies, pumpkin guts, rock walls, and many hub caps. This is to be expected I guess, but is frustrating when there are clearly faces in these pictures that it is not detecting at all!
As for actually putting names to the faces it's recognizing, it seems to do an okay job. For most people, I really can tell that iPhoto is learning and gets it right often enough. I was also impressed that it was able to match my face from current pictures all the way down to a picture of me when I was 2 (I'm 23 now) (but it still missed a lot of photos of me anyway). However it still had big problems with some people. One of my friends whom I think is pretty recognizable is a real Faces "wilde card" - he is almost NEVER recognized by iPhoto but he comes up as a suggestion for nearly everyone - guy or girl. Also one of my friends, a girl who has a slender, sharp-featured face, was getting a funny face suggestion - a picture of a storm trooper from star wars.
So the actual name to face matching works okay at best, but when I realized that if I really want to have everything tagged correctly that I would have to go through every one of my thousand photos (find faces that were missed, delete recognized faces that are not faces), it doesn't make it a very worthwhile feature, at least not in its current state. I can also see that this feature could be neatly expanded into other OS X apps and it will be interesting to see if and how they do this.
I've been impressed with the face recognition. For some faces, it takes iPhoto a little while before it learns a new face, but it definitely gets better the more you tag people. But I'm not sure about tagging a group of photos since I keep encountering an occasional error. I feel like I am going to have to go through all 3500 of my photos individually to make sure they are tagged correctly. That's gonna take some time. At least the process is fairly easy, except for when you have a group of say 8 or more folks in the picture. Then it can be hard to maneuver thru the tags.
A few things I would like added to this new feature:
1. When I am viewing photos, why doesn't it show me the tag when I hover my mouse over a face in a pic? Then maybe I could click on the tag and get to the Faces folder for that person. Just a thought.
2. As I am tagging all of my photos, I would like to know how many more I need to tag. It would be very helpful if iPhoto could tell me which photos have been fully tagged and which ones still have unresolved tags in them. I find it helps to eliminate the Unknown Face tags if you are never going to tag that person, since I think that image won't come up again as a pic that might be somebody.
3. This face recognition is just another way to apply keywords to my photos. So why don't the tags become keywords? I suppose one could use the faces folders to add keywords to each folder, but why wouldn't it just do that automatically?
4. I also kinda like how Facebook shows the names of individuals below each photo and these names serve as links to their Facebook profiles as well as a way to highlight the person's face in the image. It would be nice if when viewing a photo in iPhoto if I could see the names listed below, in order of left-right appearance in the photo, and that these names have a similar functionality. Not to their Facebook profile (though that might be a nice option in say a popup menu), but to their faces folder.
So, cool new feature but could be expanded on, I think.
Paul
A few things I would like added to this new feature:
1. When I am viewing photos, why doesn't it show me the tag when I hover my mouse over a face in a pic? Then maybe I could click on the tag and get to the Faces folder for that person. Just a thought.
2. As I am tagging all of my photos, I would like to know how many more I need to tag. It would be very helpful if iPhoto could tell me which photos have been fully tagged and which ones still have unresolved tags in them. I find it helps to eliminate the Unknown Face tags if you are never going to tag that person, since I think that image won't come up again as a pic that might be somebody.
3. This face recognition is just another way to apply keywords to my photos. So why don't the tags become keywords? I suppose one could use the faces folders to add keywords to each folder, but why wouldn't it just do that automatically?
4. I also kinda like how Facebook shows the names of individuals below each photo and these names serve as links to their Facebook profiles as well as a way to highlight the person's face in the image. It would be nice if when viewing a photo in iPhoto if I could see the names listed below, in order of left-right appearance in the photo, and that these names have a similar functionality. Not to their Facebook profile (though that might be a nice option in say a popup menu), but to their faces folder.
So, cool new feature but could be expanded on, I think.
Paul
It's interesting to hear that people are having such bad luck with the facial recognition part of iPhoto... I just installed iLife last night and, of course, iPhoto was the first thing I opened up afterwards.
I've already added about 10 people to the faces section, and so far it's doing far better than I had anticipated. Regardless of blurry shots, low-light settings, profile or straight-on photos, it seems to be doing a really great job of learning people's faces. There were a few suggestions that made me laugh (like my partner, a 34yo guy, being compared to a 67 year old white-haired lady)... but those are few and far between. And the more I add to each person, the better it gets.
I hope it gets better for those having problems so far :/
I've already added about 10 people to the faces section, and so far it's doing far better than I had anticipated. Regardless of blurry shots, low-light settings, profile or straight-on photos, it seems to be doing a really great job of learning people's faces. There were a few suggestions that made me laugh (like my partner, a 34yo guy, being compared to a 67 year old white-haired lady)... but those are few and far between. And the more I add to each person, the better it gets.
I hope it gets better for those having problems so far :/