Bites from the Apple: Faces and Places

The big news of the week is the shipment of the iLife '09 software suite, which updates iPhoto with geotagging and face detection capabilities and iMovie with easier enhanced editing functions and video stabilization--as well as updated copies of GarageBand (now with lessons from famous artists like Sting and Norah Jones--which you'll have to purchase separately), iWeb and iDVD. I just installed my copy yesterday and haven't been able to give it a full test, but I did spend some time playing around with iPhoto and have been a bit underwhelmed. The face detection feature, particularly, needs a bit of work.

And speaking of work, that's what's needed from you to get going with both the Face and Places features (the latter especially if your images don't have location information embedded in them--which will probably be most folks). For face detection, you need to select a photo and then add the face (or faces) found in the image to the face detection database. And to do this successfully, you'll need to repeat the process a couple of times before you start to get semi-reliable automated returns. Below is a screen-grab of the top returns I received after making just three initial selections:

Not that close at first blush. However, after you go through several rounds of detecting and confirming faces, its learning component definitely improves--I was pretty impressed that it was able to detect my masked face holding my minutes-old baby.

As for the Places feature, it automatically detected location information for images captured by my iPhone, but I had to manually enter information for those images snapped by my Casio Exilim. It's certainly not something I'll want to do for all my photos, but I experimented with entering specific data for images from my Parisian honeymoon. This is done either via searching through an integrated Google search field (great for finding specific addresses or touristy spots like the Arc de Triomphe) or manually dropping a pin (after searching for a particular address or nearby landmark).

I'm hoping to get a chance to fiddle around with iMovie this weekend as I've got my fingers crossed that its video stabilization feature will help with some of the shaky footage I've captured with my Flip MinoHD camcorder. For more views on iPhoto, check out reviews from Walt Mossberg (along with Uncle Walt's video review here), TUAW, Mac Observer, and Gizmodo. But for now, some sampling of the Apple-y goodness that was this past week:

• Apple quietly upgraded its affordable white MacBook with the faster NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor (to match the integrated graphics in the other new-fangled MacBooks), and it's now shipping. There are also reports that the 17-inch MacBook Pro announced at Macworld will be shipping within days.

• We may be seeing a new versions of the iMac as AppleInsider reports that availability of current models will be constrained. In other rumors, Ars Technica reports that AT&T and Apple might be collaborating on a 3G-enabled MacBook and IntoMobile reports that a new iPhone has been spotted in the code for the just-released iPhone 2.2.1 firmware update.

• When Apple's iTunes Store went (mostly) DRM-free a few weeks ago, users were offered the ability to upgrade their current lower bit rate DRM'd tracks at about a 30 percent discount. However, you were only given the choice to upgrade the entire scope of your iTunes Store purchases. Seeing that I didn't feel the need higher quality versions of everything I bought over the years (i.e., Stevie Nicks' Bella Donna), I took a pass. But this week, Apple began allowing a la carte upgrades (though it hasn't been without its problems), and I've started upgrading just my classical purchases--they definitely sound richer and have a bit more volume.

• Speaking of Apple and music, there's been a load of posts (including this one) in the gadgetosphere this week about a Steve Jobs interview with Rolling Stone back in 2003, in which Jobs (in retrospect) was quite the music biz oracle.

• Aric posted several easy-peasy DIY iPhone stands earlier this week, and now Cult of Mac offers its guide on how to turn a juice box into an iPhone case.

• The Microsoft Zune got clobbered in sales by the iPod over the holiday season, and Andrew Leonard at Salon notes that Microsoft's product placement strategy, to put it politely, is not working.

• Dan Moren at Macworld asks whatever happened to the email push notification that was promised for the iPhone 2.0 software (he doesn't get much of an answer out of Apple), but then wonders if the feature is really needed:

  Maybe that’s the simple answer: that people--to wit, users--just don’t care. They’ve learned to adapt to the iPhone’s way of doing things, and that way doesn’t include notifications or multitasking...at the moment, anyway. At some point in the future it seems likely that Apple will introduce a new feature that takes care of the issues that notifications would have addressed, and it appears that most users are content to wait until then.

• Charts and graphs via Fortune's Apple 2.0 blog give a snapshot of Apple's week in the news.

• And finally, my new favorite iPhone app is QuadCamera (link opens in iTunes), which enables you to take multiple shots in quick succession, which then places the photos in one of several layouts--2x2, 4x1, 4x2, 8x1. Some user reviews were disappointed in that it didn't provide full versions of the multiple shots, but as a longtime fan of the Lomo Action Sampler I'm quite satisfied with the results.

--Agen G.N. Schmitz

Comments

[anonymous on January 31, 2009 at 07:56 PM]

I put in over 20 hours with iPhoto 2009 in the last 3 days, using it to identify and file thousands of multi-generational family photos. For this task, the Face capability is fantastic, my work is a million times more efficient than it was 4 days ago. My library contains over 8,000 photos.

Some observations:

1. In the beginning, Face can make some wild connections. The more you use the Name (Face) feature, the better iPhoto learns faces and the better the results. My Face searches are now very quick and some are highly accurate (I currently have 151 Faces with around 2,000 photos in them.) I've added around 200 new photos since I started using Face and it's now only seconds, literally, to put them through Face and file them.

2. If you have a large library, the Face feature is an exceptionally powerful tool for finding and organizing. The need to set up an album by individual is irrelevant, because Face performs the function. Once you have collections of Faces, the sorted Face photos can easily be isolated and moved, filed, exported or managed as needed.

Now the fastest way to find a single photo among my 8,000 photos is using Face.

3. If you're doing multi-generational sorting, you don't want perfect recognition. Many times the search brings up infant and young child images of individuals based only on the images of adults identified earlier.

4. My library is full of family faces. This gives Face more problems in some ways, because many individuals have very strong resemblances. I've found many resemblances that weren't recognized before that might not ever have been found. ("Did you know that Johnny at age 6 in 1970 was the spitting image of Grandma in 1926? And our second cousins look more like us than they do their Dad?")

I learned that most of us married people who have the same essential facial archetype as our family. If there is confusion in Face, it is nearly always within the same bloodlines and their spouses and spouses' families.

I've only been playing with iPhoto 09 for a few days and have only scratched the surface. Can't wait to play with the other apps. No, I don't work for Apple, nor do any of my family or friends. :)