Photo Tagger: Facial Recognition for Auto-Tagging Facebook Photos
We have invites, click through to get yours!
Earlier this year, a company called Face.com brought facial recognition technology to Facebook by way of an application called Photo Finder which scanned through untagged photos and identified the people within them. Now, using the same facial recognition algorithms that made Photo Finder possible, the company is introducing Photo Tagger, an app which scans through select online albums to automate the tagging process.
The two Face.com Facebook applications are very similar in nature. They both use the company's facial recognition technology to match people with their pictures by way of a special algorithm called the "hybrid descriptor-based funneled" model. To the layperson, though, all that matters is that the technology makes facial recognition possible even in "everyday" photos - meaning photos taken from different angles, out-of-focus shots, photos in low lighting or those in which people are making odd facial expressions, etc.
About Photo Tagger
But where Photo Finder focuses on discovery, Photo Tagger focuses on productivity. With the new app, you can choose the albums to scan - whether your own or those belonging to your friends - and the app will process the photos they contain. Photo Tagger will batch the people it finds into groups and will then suggest tags for them. Once you confirm the tags, they're automatically pushed to Facebook where the people tagged are notified, just as if the process had been done manually.
Facebook users who upload a lot of photos will find an application like this extremely useful as it dramatically cuts down on the time it takes to tag images. Instead of having to go through each photo one-by-one, you can simply confirm the tags the application suggests. And surprisingly, it doesn't make a lot of mistakes. The facial recognition technology employed by both of these applications is incredibly accurate. In our tests, the most common mistake it made was to identify a picture of a friend's child as the friend themselves - a problem that has a lot to do with how facial features between related family members are so alike. But for the most part, the app identified photos correctly.
The Photo Finder app has already produced amazing results. It has scanned more than 1.5 billion photos so far and has identified more than 2.3 million faces. What's even more shocking about these numbers is that the app is still in closed alpha. Imagine how many faces it will scan when it opens up!
Get in on the Alpha
Photo Tagger will also launch in closed alpha but will probably be closed for a shorter period of time than the Photo Finder application. The reason for this is because Photo Tagger scans albums on the fly as opposed to scanning an entire network of inter-connected users and their photos like Finder does - a number which can be on average over a hundred thousand photos. Since that causes a bigger impact on the service's back-end than Photo Tagger, it will remain closed for longer while the company works out the kinks.
No matter, because out of the two applications, Facebook users will likely find Photo Tagger the more useful of the two since it offers a more direct purpose: tag these photos fast!
Photo Tagger launches today in private alpha. If you want in, you can click this link to add the app to Facebook right away. Only the first 100 ReadWriteWeb visitors who do so will be given access. Good luck!
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How is this different from Polar Rose?
Seems like a cool application! How long before we have a service that can get matching photos across the entire internet? Or does something like this exist already?
This is Gil, CEO of Face.com, the creators of PhotoTagger :)
I wanted to respond to Dona's question about Polar Rose -
The core differences between Face.com products and other players in this field are in the technology. face.com's tech recognizes on mass, and does it fast, without requiring users to upload/import/export photos to our services. So what that means to you Dona, and other PhotoTagger users is a great, up and running right out of the gate, user experience. You can immediately begin tagging photos, no waiting, no delays waiting for our technology to "catch up". Of course we're still ironing out bugs and we'd love to get your feedback - give it a go!
As for Carl's Q: Currently we're focused on facebook users, though we're looking to launch additional services wherever there are people and photos to share - Stay tuned!
Feel free to contact me directly at gil@face.com, would love to hear what you think!
I just signed up for the Photo Tagger alpha (I had previously signed up for the Photo Finder alpha) and ran it against two of my personal photo albums on Facebook. I noticed that Photo Tagger did not suggest possible matches for the faces it found, but I'm not sure whether that's because of the different purposes of the two applications, or if it was because this is the first time that I had used Photo Tagger and it just hadn't encountered the faces yet, or whether it's just an issue with the alpha software. I'll continue to test, but this is definitely a nice way to rapidly tag photos AND get those tags into Facebook. Thanks to Sarah for sharing the invites, and to face.com for providing another useful application.
I got one of the Photo Tagger invites. Thanks!
Posted by: John E. Bredehoft
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July 21, 2009 10:50 AM
gil@face.com here - Hi John and thanks for checking us out on facebook! Unlike Photo Finder which sifts through 100's of thousands of photos to generate results, Photo Tagger's technology learns on the fly to provide immediate results, and should improve over time based on usage and spread.
PS:
Sarah - loved reading your article!
Great app. Only other thing I would like is to a search and tag for photos over the entire internet (or at least over the entirety of most major photo sharing sites).
I am having a problem with the hang time while saving to facebook. Basically, the pop up window that says it is tagging to facebook after you have made your changes stays indefinitely. Keeping it open and turning to the profile on another tab shows that it does not make progress as far as I know. Anyone know of any solutions?
very thanks for article