Face Recognition - Protocols?

[jch2103]

Because there's been discussion recently about face recognition, I thought I'd raise this question.

Background
I've experimented with Picasa for face recognition for a few years, but as yet haven't had Picasa store name tags in photos (except for very limited testing). Nor have I (consciously) shared face information with Google (i.e., I've never signed in with a Google account in Picasa).

When I started, I just used first names. This got confusing very quickly (for example, there are many people named John in my extended family). So I started using first name/last name. Now I could separate people with the same first names, but there are still issues such as how to handle people who have changed their names through marriage or otherwise.

In addition to relatively recent digital and scanned film images, I also have a collection of digitized genealogical photos/portraits. For these, I've (for now) adopted a naming convention of last name, first name and comments; e.g., 'Crandall, Leroy 1888.jpg' or 'Goodloe, Mary King Herndon and Marie Goodloe Crandall 1945.jpg'). I've been considering adding face recognition to these images.

Question
For those of you who've been using face recognition (Picasa or otherwise), how do you name your faces? How do you handle name changes? Do you have any tips or suggestions for best practices?

[Frank]

With picasa I have lot of experience, but I am on the Road at the Moment. Writing this With my phone is no Fun.
I will come back With a detailed answer.
Frank

[Frank]

I've experimented with Picasa for face recognition for a few years, but as yet haven't had Picasa store name tags in photos (except for very limited testing). Nor have I (consciously) shared face information with Google (i.e., I've never signed in with a Google account in Picasa).

For not sharing information with google just use a VMware (host only and USB drive) and than google is not able to get your data. Working with picasa is sometimes a nightmare because,

• It does not import all images out of your folder
• It does not store all the times all recognized faces to the picture. Reepeat the steps menioned later.
• It becomes very slow when working with many pictures. Therefore I have many users in my VM Ware called picasa_1, picasa_2,...
• ...

But it is the best available solution on the marked. I have tried all solutions they are even worse.

When I started, I just used first names. This got confusing very quickly (for example, there are many people named John in my extended family). So I started using first name/last name.

Because picasa writes information best to jpg I deceided to make the jpg as my masterfile and the RAW as the buddy. So I only write the faces to the jpg file.
My naming convention changed a lot because of the progress in learning how to.
"Lastname_Firstname". If the combination rices a second time with a different person than I ask myself the following question: "Does the person belongs to the family I have already tagged faces?" YES or NO.

YES: Lastname_Firstname-A
NO: Lastname-A_Firstname

Now I could separate people with the same first names, but there are still issues such as how to handle people who have changed their names through marriage or otherwise.

With the problem of marriage I have solved it as follows
Steps to fullfill the goal
1. Tools --> Option --> Name Tag       Store name tag in Photo
2. select the first people and than Strg + A (select all)
3. Right mouse click on the thumbs and "Move to new person"
4. Create a new name like LastnameNEW_Frank

In addition to relatively recent digital and scanned film images, I also have a collection of digitized genealogical photos/portraits. For these, I've (for now) adopted a naming convention of last name, first name and comments; e.g., 'Crandall, Leroy 1888.jpg' or 'Goodloe, Mary King Herndon and Marie Goodloe Crandall 1945.jpg'). I've been considering adding face recognition to these images.

I have also scanned images but I do not have a different naming convention there. For me it does not make sence because the people is still the same. All pictures of my childhood belonging to the same Frank and not to a other Frank. Having the same naming convention you can later easily use dynamic categories to categorise and classify them.
In my case the name from picasa e.g. Westphal_Mario would looklike in Imatch5

W                        To category
--Westphal            Lastname category
----Mario               Firstname  category
This makes life easier


Hope that helps a bit
Frank

[jch2103]

Thanks, Frank. Not too different from what I'm leaning toward; it's good to get someone else's perspective.

John