How to Use Face Recognition in Apple iPhoto

iPhoto '09 From Apple

Apple's iPhoto'09 has some unique features that are both useful and fun. One of these is face recognition. When using the new iPhoto you will notice "Faces" listed under events in the browser window. By identifying faces from the image library you will automatically create albums for specific people. When you open the album, iPhoto will make suggestions for other images based on the image you've selected. You can then confirm or reject the addition to the album. It is easy and fun to do. Here is how to get started using face recognition.

Things You'll Need

• Apple Macintosh running OS-X
• iLife '09 from Apple

Instructions

1. 

   First open iPhoto '09 and click on the FACES tab. After you have selected FACES, albums will appear under this tab for each recognized face. To get started, navigate to the PHOTOS tab and find a person that you want to be identified in an album. This is good for all friends and family, since it will allow you to collect albums for each person without having to "move" photos from the library to a separate album.

2. 

   Scroll through you photos in the library until you find someone you want to recognize. For this example I will use a photo of my wife and me in Montreal to illustrate the process. When you click on the image, notice that a NAME button appears in the bottom icon tool bar. Simply click on NAME to begin the process.

3. 

   Now it is time to name the photo. When you click on the NAME button it will open the photo within a special browser window. In this case it recognizes two faces and allows you to name both. Sometimes it will not recognize any face, but you can ADD a face and move the box to select a part of the image. You can also move, enlarge and reduce the box to help the application recognize the face.

4. 

   After you have identified a face, click on the FACE tab. Notice that now there are two albums, one for each face that I recognized. After you have identified a number of faces, each one will appear here as an album. You can even use it to recognize pets by ADDING a box to an image and selecting the pet's head.

5. 

   Click on any album to open it. You can see that the face recognition system recognized a number of other images, which are the bracket exposures for this photograph. I can easily add them by clicking on the CONFIRM button. As you identify more images from different settings and angles, the system will make new suggestions for images to confirm. After you have some albums set up, continue to go through the library and identify different photographs of the same people. Then check under FACES to confirm new additions to the person's album. It is fun to do and a great thing to do while on hold on the phone or waiting for the pizza to be delivered.

Tips & Warnings

• Experiment with enlarging and reducing the recognition box to only include the face.

• Add multiple angles and views of the same person to increase the amount of confirmations offered by the system.

• Deleting a FACES album does not delete the image from your library,

Resources

• Apple Computers