Photo Thursdays- Facial Recognition Software

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(Photo Thursdays is designed to help average people learn how to make their photos better. All the tutorials are done using Picasa which is a free program from Google. Go here to download it and join in the fun. If you want to read the rest of my tutorials and get caught up, go here.)

Did you know that the newest version of Picasa has facial recognition software? This means that you can label everyone in your pictures and if you ever need a picture of someone in particular you can just click on their folder. Here is how you set yours up. There should be a tab named ‘unnamed people’ it is towards the top before your folders.Click on that. It will give you a group of picture with type boxes underneath life the picture below. (Just FYI, if you just barely downloaded Picasa you might not be able to do this yet. It takes quite awhile of Picasa being open on your computer for it to scan all your pictures for faces.)

Then when you find a picture of someone you want to name. Start typing their name in the box below the picture. If you have already added that person, you will find their name on the drop down menu. Select their name and it automatically add it to their folder.
If you haven’t already created that person, type the name in the text box below the picture. Finish typing it and press enter. A box like this will pop. Select new person and then OK on the next screen and it will create a new person with the name you typed it. It then scans your pictures and put every picture it thinks has that person in it into their folder.

It creates a folder for you. Click on the little icon at the top right of their folder that has a question mark in it and it will show you all of the suggestions for that person. You can confirm or deny each suggestion.
When you show only the suggestions it will look like the picture below. See how each picture has a check or a x below it? Go through the pictures and check the ones that are of the person the folder is named for and x those the aren’t of them. The more you do this, the more accurate the software gets because it has more to go one.
Like if you look at the one below, it has both adult and child pictures of the same person because I have labeled pictures of that person as both an adult and a child.
Some major pluses – If I want to find a picture of my husband, I just click on his folder and voila!
Some minuses- It has a hard time with baby faces and I didn’t realize how much my sister and I looked alike until it kept mixing us up.
Self-esteem boost- It thinks pictures of me as a baby and my little girl are the same person. Sure make me feel good to know this program thinks she looks like her mama.