Picasa 3.5 Adds Face Recognition

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://picasa-readme.blogspot.com/' target='_blank'>http://picasa-readme.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"We're happy to announce the launch of Picasa 3.5, the latest release of Picasa photo management software. If you don't want to wait until we autoupdate everyone to Picasa 3.5, you can download it at picasa.google.com. This ReadMe page appears when a new version of Picasa software is available, and tells you what changes and improvements are in each release."</em></p><p><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="600" height="360" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/gYO2uhrIZJ4&amp;ap=%26fmt=18" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="600" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/gYO2uhrIZJ4&amp;ap=%26fmt=18"></embed></object></p><p>Picasa is, bar none, the best free photo organizer tool there is on the market today - it rivals and surpasses some of the $100+ software I've seen. Google continues to invest in improving the program, which is great to see. I was worried for a while there, but Google evidently sees value in having such a great piece of software in their portfolio. If you haven't <a href="http://picasa.google.com/" target="_blank">checked Picasa out</a>, you really should!</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

[cmchavez]

Just in time to coincide with my recent purchase of a new Gigabyte mobo and and Intel i5 processor (the previous 4 year-old mobo croaked a couple of weeks ago). Put this software together with the new SATA drive I won from Jason (Thanks again Jason!) and the extra processing time and storage space that facial recognition probably requires will be no problem for the home computer. :)

[Jason Dunn]

...and the extra processing time and storage space that facial recognition probably requires will be no problem for the home computer.

I'm running the scan on my photos, now, and it's rather unfortunate that the scanning process isn't multi-threaded...in fact, it's barely using any CPU power. We're talking 4-8% or so. I can't tell if the process is stuck or what...it's been at 33% for a while now. And this is on a Core i7 920 system...

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Boo for software not taking advantage of the latest hardware. I'm still getting hiccups every now and then, and it frustrates me to see that the CPU isn't even taxed...

[Jason Dunn]

Boo for software not taking advantage of the latest hardware. I'm still getting hiccups every now and then, and it frustrates me to see that the CPU isn't even taxed...

Yeah, it sucks. It's SUPER disk intensive, but barely uses the CPU. But the worst is that, unless I'm mistaken, all of the face ID info isn't put into the metadata - it's kept inside the Picasa.ini files. :mad:

[alanjrobertson]

The bit I really like in 3.5 is the way that geo-tagged photos are automatically identified and you can have the wee map display up on the right - it then moves instantly to wherever you were when you took the photo! (I'm using a Sony Ericsson C905).

[ptyork]

I'm iffy on the facial recognition accuracy. At times it is amazing. And then you identify a photo as belonging to a person and it goes nuts incorrectly identifying everyone as that person. It's good. Say 90% hit rate. But not great. I'm also confused that at times it seems to untag people (or rather retag them as being other people). I also will note that it is better then 90% with adults young and old, but much worse than that with infants and toddlers. Unfortunately, I have thousands of pictures of infants and toddlers. :(

I'll be interested to see how this information is stored. I have a feeling that Jason is correct. Picasa rarely modifies any original photos, so it is likely tucked away in the picasa.ini file rather than in the embedded meta data. Should be easy to create a utility to migrate the tags to the meta data, though. Is there a standard meta tag for this?

[Jason Dunn]

I also will note that it is better then 90% with adults young and old, but much worse than that with infants and toddlers. Unfortunately, I have thousands of pictures of infants and toddlers.

Yeah, I was impressed with the accuracy of adults - even adults over 15+ years - but small children and babies? Picasa thinks they're all the same. :(

I'll be interested to see how this information is stored. I have a feeling that Jason is correct. Picasa rarely modifies any original photos, so it is likely tucked away in the picasa.ini file rather than in the embedded meta data.

It's worse than that - I'll be posting about this on the front page, but essentially the data is stored in picasa.ini files AND the local Picasa database. That means it's a 100% non-multi computer solution. No way to sync the Picasa database that I'm aware of without bad things happening. So I'm not going to use the face detection stuff, even though I'd like to.

[QUOTE=ptyork;712847]Should be easy to create a utility to migrate the tags to the meta data, though. Is there a standard meta tag for this?

I think that's part of the problem - there's no EXIF/IPTC tag I'm aware of for holding data about faces in a photo. I think that's the reason why every program that offers this feature does it in a non-metadata way. :(

[ptyork]

It's worse than that - I'll be posting about this on the front page, but essentially the data is stored in picasa.ini files AND the local Picasa database. That means it's a 100% non-multi computer solution. No way to sync the Picasa database that I'm aware of without bad things happening. So I'm not going to use the face detection stuff, even though I'd like to.

Well, damn, damn, and triple damn. That means that I have (so far) wasted 3+ hours correcting faces. I synchronize these things between 4 drives on 3 computers (I'm pretty paranoid about losing memories). If this is true then, well, wow, that's pathetic! Are you sure that the database isn't just a cache of the face data to make indexing faster? Pretty please?!?

[Jason Dunn]

Are you sure that the database isn't just a cache of the face data to make indexing faster? Pretty please?!?

Well, I'll put it to you this way: I ID'd a few hundred faces on one computer, watched as Windows Live Sync pushed the picasa.ini files across to my other computer, then fired up Picasa on my computer. None of the faces were ID'd. The original number of "unknown" faces didn't change. So I'm 100% sure the data isn't about the picasa.ini files only.

[ptyork]

So I'm 100% sure the data isn't about the picasa.ini files only.

You have made me quite sad. :(

[Jason Dunn]

You have made me quite sad. :(

Focus your sadness into action by going into the Picasa help forums and posting a message saying that Google shouldn't have implemented it like this:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Picasa/label?lid=523d5991dbedd0cd&hl=en

[Stinger]

I agree with Jason - leave your feedback with Google. You never know, they might just pay attention.

My camera (Lumix TZ7) has face recognition and can remember up to 6 different faces It's a shame that the camera and Picasa can't transfer this data between them.

Face recognition is obviously a feature that we're going to see more and more so let's hope that a standard is agreed upon. Having personally worked on MPEG-7 (metadata for video), I'm surprised that there isn't a standard already.