While we were waiting for Microsoft to release an updated version of Windows Live Gallery with facial recognition support, CNET just broke the news that Google had already added facial matching features in their own Picasa Web Albums website.
Google will also release Picasa 3 for Windows desktop sometime later today that includes a new movie maker mode to help you make moving video clips out of your still photographs.
While sharing his own experience with the face recognition feature of Picasa Web Albums, Stephen writes:
"It took me less than 15 minutes to tag close to 200 faces in a set of more than 100 photos, and that included some start-up time such as figuring out how the system worked, establishing names for various common subjects, and correcting a few errors.
The most impressive moments are when Picasa presents a large array of photos with the same face, and you can label them all with a single click. "
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/software/face-recognition-in-picasa-web-albums/4373/
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
Wow, it only took Google like 3 years to copy what Riya.com was doing.
Web Albums face recognition is crap. I want it on my desktop. If I’m uploading photos to Flickr or Picasa, I’m probably going to tag them already.
I want it to go through the 10,000 photos on my hard drive and tag them into my LOCAL database for quick searching. Once they’re on the web, I can use another tool to search through the tags. It’s called GOOGLE!
Booooooh!
Written by VitaminCM on 09.02.08
I’m a fan of this new feature. I honestly have a bit more fun working with my photos. I am still kind of dabbling in both Flickr and Picasa… trying to decide which is better for me.
Written by Greg Loesch on 09.02.08
i have to stick with windows live photo gallery, because picasa doesn’t work with flickr. and i expect windows live photo gallery to keep up in the feature race.
Written by mrshl on 09.03.08
Well, Riya didn’t quite work, did it?
“I want it to go through the 10,000 photos on my hard drive and tag them into my LOCAL database”
Yea. Me too. And if you look at Picasa 3 (beta) it has a face button that seems to suggest that the face recognition features will be rolling into the client as well overtime. As of now the button “only” recognizes which photos have faces and allows to filter only those visible. But of course we don’t know if the client is doing some other analysis on the photos as well.
In any case, this is a good start. Way over 50% of my photos don’t have faces.
It’s good to be able to show only phtoos w/ people in them.
And no other service or software provides me this ability as of now.
So, booooh to you, too :)
Written by Antero K. Koskinen on 09.03.08
Actually, it’s “Windows Live Photo Gallery”. You’re missing the Photo part. Windows Live Gallery is Microsoft’s share/download site for users.
I love WLPG. Hopefully it’ll come with some more of its own whizbang features. Microsoft’s been working pretty hard with photo technology.
Written by Quikboy on 09.05.08
I want Picasa 3 to have the face recognition as well. I don’t feel quite as comfortable labeling all the faces online - I’d much rather keep it to a sw tool.
Still cool - but offline - much cooler.
Written by Mark on 09.05.08
read Picasa’s License agreement 11.1
With face recognition they know all about you and your friends :)
Written by JOakim on 09.24.08