Face Recognition

[fashionshowphotos]

hi
Face recognition would be usefuly
putting names into the metadata is really time consuming

[Kirk Baker]

hi
Face recognition would be usefuly
putting names into the metadata is really time consuming

And how would that work exactly?

-Kirk

[fashionshowphotos]

Hi Kirk.
could it have a data base of faces that you id
it would then look at the biometric data and find similar faces.
iphoto seems to think it has something that does it.

there are few companies doing it
google has something in the pipeline with its purchase of venton.

I know it sounds like a hell of a lot but if you put it into a new programme like ProPhotoMechanic bet people would buy it.
The thought of trying to use iphoto is just too annoying.
sean

[Kirk Baker]

sean,

could it have a data base of faces that you id
it would then look at the biometric data and find similar faces.
iphoto seems to think it has something that does it.

there are few companies doing it
google has something in the pipeline with its purchase of venton.

I know it sounds like a hell of a lot but if you put it into a new programme like ProPhotoMechanic bet people would buy it.
The thought of trying to use iphoto is just too annoying.

I have no experience writing facial recognition software.  There are others on the team that have written neural networking software in the past and handwriting recognition software so maybe they'd be able to tackle it...

-Kirk

[ricardsonwilliams]

Moro info about face detection, I really want to see this feature in the future.

http://opencv.willowgarage.com/wiki/FaceDetection

[smudger32]

Face recognition would be nice, but who would maintain the face database?

My colleagues and I shoot a lot of Running and Cycling events, where the competitors have numbers on their fronts, we caption the images with the Competitors number so that the Competitor can search and find all their photos on our website.

The captioning takes time, it would be really good if photo mechanic could do an OCR scan of the image, find the competitors number and add it to the caption field as part of the ingest.

Mick

[vAfotoriporter]

OCR might be easier to implement and a great deal of help for a lot of us. However it would definietly need some level of confirmation what to add to the metadata. Imagine a photo with one start number and a lot of brand names, advertisements, etc all recognized by the OCR.

I am currently testing Apple's Aperture 3 which just got the Face recognition they presented in iPhoto last year. It is a fun thing and can help in some cases, but has some drawbacks as well. It has specially hard times with glasses, goggles, and sideways profile shots. In these cases it doesn't even recognize a face. Some times it recognizes the ball or a smiley on an advert as a face. I had a rare luck to have it really recognize a person. Usually marks faces as unknown and I have to enter the names manually. And even mark those faces it did not recognize as a face. But others tell me it does evolve and once you marked couple hundred images it quite often suggests the right names for the right faces so you only have to press OK for it.

[smudger32]

OCR can produce some unwanted text being recognised, this could be minimised by selecting the area to be scanned, the approximate area where the competitors Bib can be expected. The number of incorrect recognitions could be reduced by having a couple of exclude lists, one general, which would have all the manufacturers marks etc and an event specific exclude list which would contain the event detail on the Competitors Bib.
Even if this was implemented each result would still have to be reviewed manually but we do this anyway to check Composition, Colour and Focus.

Just an idle thought, out of focus images could be detected and tagged automatically!

[vAfotoriporter]

OCR can produce some unwanted text being recognised, this could be minimised by selecting the area to be scanned, the approximate area where the competitors Bib can be expected. The number of incorrect recognitions could be reduced by having a couple of exclude lists, one general, which would have all the manufacturers marks etc and an event specific exclude list which would contain the event detail on the Competitors Bib.
Even if this was implemented each result would still have to be reviewed manually but we do this anyway to check Composition, Colour and Focus.

This sounds good to set an area of the image where to look for characters and an exclude list seems a good solution as well - maybe with some level of heuristics as not necessary all the text is allways in the field or blocked by the subject. It is obvious it would need a review process to at least confirm or cancel the results of the automated features.

Just an idle thought, out of focus images could be detected and tagged automatically!

Good idea but I don't know how hard this could be for PM to implement. And how accurate this can be. Can it be trusted not to need any revision (as being tagged unsharp in my workflow means it has been revised and found to be trash).

Anyway both OCR and out of focus check would mean PM should go through all images and check their visual data. Thiss would need considerable amount of time and computing power that PM usually does not use except for the export and save as features. I am not sure either OCR or a focus check could be done without locking down PM for a long period of time.

[mbbphoto]

Face recognition would be a wonderful addition.
Whereby PM would recognize similar looking faces and suggest names from your own previous captions....
Seems to be appearing in more software but may not be ready for prime time....
(Post Catalog Release Feature Request!)
Marc

[Primoz]

I agree it would be great thing to make our life easier, but there's (at least) few problems with it. I assume in USA these things are pretty easy to handle, but Europe is completely different thing.
Just a week or so ago, Facebook finally canceled this face recognition system they were running due privacy law problems across the Europe. So these things are extremely problematic in Europe, especially if there would be some central database maintained by Camerbits, or even inside your own company/your own laptop on site. Privacy laws are pretty tight and strict over here (which is not all that bad thing afterall), so personally I don't see any option to make this thing running.
OCR of athletes bibs combined with start list and code replacement on the other side would be probably done without complications with privacy laws and similar issues.

[vAfotoriporter]

I agree it would be great thing to make our life easier, but there's (at least) few problems with it. I assume in USA these things are pretty easy to handle, but Europe is completely different thing.
Just a week or so ago, Facebook finally canceled this face recognition system they were running due privacy law problems across the Europe. So these things are extremely problematic in Europe, especially if there would be some central database maintained by Camerbits, or even inside your own company/your own laptop on site. Privacy laws are pretty tight and strict over here (which is not all that bad thing afterall), so personally I don't see any option to make this thing running.
OCR of athletes bibs combined with start list and code replacement on the other side would be probably done without complications with privacy laws and similar issues.

Don't mix things. Facebook's face recognition was turned off because it is a world wide system accessible by anone around the world that could lead to privacy righ breaches.

Apple's iPhoto and Apeture has this feature just like the Picasa desktop app and some other programmes as I know. Privacy rights are not that much of an issue until you don't use it a widely and publicly open system like Facebook is. But the probable patentedness of such techniques may deter Camera Bits to enter such developments, however useful they could be for us in PM and/or the catalog. Just like adding OCR technology.

[Primoz]

Privacy rights are not that much of an issue until you don't use it a widely and publicly open system like Facebook is.

I admit I don't have (much) of knowledge about privacy law in other EU countries, but in our, things are not that simple.
Sure if you are using this at home, things are easy, and noone will really care about this (as long as you don't put this out to public), therefore noone will bother to come and check what you are running, and how you are using your tihngs. But considering not everyone are using this at home, but quite few of us are running PM for business in offices of registered companies, we are tied to some stricter control.
For companies, even if you don't use this database publicly, you are limited what kind of data you can collect (they actually do send inspectors to check these things from time to time). And collecting such data is way out of limits, no matter what your usage is. I know it sounds stupid, but unfortunately that's what we have here (Slovenia).

[vAfotoriporter]

Privacy rights are not that much of an issue until you don't use it a widely and publicly open system like Facebook is.

I admit I don't have (much) of knowledge about privacy law in other EU countries, but in our, things are not that simple.
Sure if you are using this at home, things are easy, and noone will really care about this (as long as you don't put this out to public), therefore noone will bother to come and check what you are running, and how you are using your tihngs. But considering not everyone are using this at home, but quite few of us are running PM for business in offices of registered companies, we are tied to some stricter control.
For companies, even if you don't use this database publicly, you are limited what kind of data you can collect (they actually do send inspectors to check these things from time to time). And collecting such data is way out of limits, no matter what your usage is. I know it sounds stupid, but unfortunately that's what we have here (Slovenia).

This means you cannot use a photo archive that records faces and the names of the persons on the photos? I find it hard to belive and face recognition is not much different especially if it serves only this purpose - and you don't offer this kind of service for other parties.
If what you say would work this way then Apple's iPhoto and Aperture should be banned because they both have face recognition features built into them.

[Kirk Baker]

Privacy rights are not that much of an issue until you don't use it a widely and publicly open system like Facebook is.

I admit I don't have (much) of knowledge about privacy law in other EU countries, but in our, things are not that simple.
Sure if you are using this at home, things are easy, and noone will really care about this (as long as you don't put this out to public), therefore noone will bother to come and check what you are running, and how you are using your tihngs. But considering not everyone are using this at home, but quite few of us are running PM for business in offices of registered companies, we are tied to some stricter control.
For companies, even if you don't use this database publicly, you are limited what kind of data you can collect (they actually do send inspectors to check these things from time to time). And collecting such data is way out of limits, no matter what your usage is. I know it sounds stupid, but unfortunately that's what we have here (Slovenia).

This means you cannot use a photo archive that records faces and the names of the persons on the photos? I find it hard to belive and face recognition is not much different especially if it serves only this purpose - and you don't offer this kind of service for other parties.
If what you say would work this way then Apple's iPhoto and Aperture should be banned because they both have face recognition features built into them.

I believe that the two apps you mentioned are "trained" by the user.  There is no centralized database that is consulted by the feature.

-Kirk