iLife Face Detection

iPhoto 2009
Originally uploaded by CameronMagee

Apple just updated it's "iLife" suite of software. I have not got to tinker with any of the applications besides iPhoto, because once I opened it, I haven't been able to move to anything else. The new iPhoto 2009, rocks. IT ROCKS.

The upgrade costs $80 for one person, or $100 for five. I'll give you a second to guess what I did, but you won't need it. The Candy Man managed to round up four willing volunteers to pitch in, and we got the five-pack. So now, we each get the update for $20. TWENTY DOLLARS, PEOPLE. I'm working it. Sticking it to the man. Beating the system.

Get busy livin', or get busy dyin'.

My $20 bill went solely for iPhoto, and solely for one feature. They call it "faces".

iPhoto displays all my photos, all 16,827 of them, in a grid. I pull up a photo of say, my family at graduation. iPhoto draws boxes around what it detects as faces in the photo, asking you to tag a name to each face. I tag myself, my brother, and both my parents. BOOM BABY, iPhoto immediately searches the other 16,826 photos, drawing boxes around all the faces, looking for more photos of my brother.

It pulls them up in a new tab, listing out a hundred or so photos.I click the ones it got right, ID'ing them as Caleb, and double-click the wrong ones (it's kind of funny to see what it mixes up for Caleb). The more faces I confirm, the smarter it gets. Soon, it has found every single photo of Caleb on my computer.

From now on, when I add photos from my camera, it will automatically look for Caleb's face, because it knows his face REALLY well by now.

It does this for every single face on my computer. All it needs from me is a name to match a face. It can find all 12,000 photos of "person x", the only thing I do is say, "Oh, person x is my friend Aubrey", and it goes, "Oh, right, Aubrey. I know her!".

I love it. Love it.