Sunday, February 15, 2009

iPhoto Face Recognition and learning

We have loaded the newest version of iPhoto, the Mac photo archive tool, on our computer and spend a little time here and there training the program to recognize people. We are discovering that is a little challenging for the software to recognize faces when they all look alike - and even some who do not look alike. Also, when we have the same person from 1 to 38 it can be challenging for the computer. Take a look at the following photos as we were attempting to train the software to find Bonnie:

Of course once we have the software partially trained it begins to identify everyone that looks like Bonnie and ask us if this is Bonne? Clearly some more training is in store for the software.

We have discovered that Mom's are significantly impacted by face recognition (go figure) as in this case where I inadvertently selected Sally as Bonnie and Grandma reminded me I didn't have a clue what I was doing. When I deselected it, however, this was what I got. See Sally/Bonnie - okay, Sally to the right.

Not to be outdone, I asked myself, what if I start to do a face recognition of Sally? Will it tell me it is Sally? I do front and side photo face recognition and while it captures the front pretty well, but still it needs work on the side shots. Sally was unrecognizable in this photo, although after I select a few more side shots it was less of a problem.
Yet, after a little more work iPhoto found Chas without any problem at all! Even if he was in his most profound pose.

You should see what happens when I try to put all of the daughters photos in. The software just throws up its electronic hands and says, "they all look alike - Including the mother." But then, I've know that for years. When the girls are in town everyone knows they are sisters and who their mom is.

2 comments:

Student Entrepreneur said...

That is great Dad!! I loved looking at it with you when I was there!

sally said...

This is just too funny. I love the photo of Chas - he must be really young in that photo. I can only imagine how the computer must be confused when all of the girls & mom are in the photo. Imagine if the grandkids were in there too.