As an
experiment, I’ve been playing with the online demo pages of a couple of face
recognition software sites, www.rekognition.com
and www.faceplusplus.com. They claim to be
able not just to recognize a face in a picture, but to estimate age and gender
as well as things like expressions. With a bunch of pictures uploaded to Tumblr,
how can you resist?
Since
I’m not the world’s best makeup artist, I’ve run a lot of my pictures through
various digital makeover programs, like Portrait Professional (a seriously high
end, but surprisingly cheap bit of software intended for professional portrait photographers)
and some more fun makeover ones like ArcSoft’s Portrait + and Pefecta 365, for
a bit (OK, quite a lot) of judicious skin smoothing, eye-brightening and teeth
whitening.
To
make it fairer, I cropped and resized each file to around 400 pixels before
uploading both before and after running it through a digital makeover to see if it made any difference to the results.
set 1:beforedigital makeover
A B C D E F
G
set 2:after digital makeover/smoothing with Portait+, Perfecta 365, or Portrait Pro
Face recognition software results (gender M male, F female, age)
Image
|
Face++
(before
makeover)
|
Face++
(after
makeover)
|
Rekogniton
(before
makeover)
|
Rekogniton
(after
makeover)
|
A
|
M,52
|
F,56
|
F,44
|
F,32
|
B
|
F,
29
|
F,
28
|
F,39
|
F,
36
|
C
|
F,43
|
F,
46
|
F,37
|
F,36
|
D
|
F,38
|
F,
36
|
F,44
|
F,39
|
E
|
F,44
|
F,42
|
F,35
|
F,35
|
F
|
F,38
|
F,33
|
F,36
|
F,35
|
G
|
M,36
|
M,30
|
F, 34
|
F, 31
|
The
results are interesting, if salutory in a couple of instance.
Pleasingly most of the images fooled both programs, although Face++ has the edge on 'reading' me on a couple of occasions. They also suggest that I look better/more convincing as a redhead or brunette than a blonde. (This might be quite a good styling tool if you are searching for a look that best suits you.) And I seem to pass better when I look happy.
Both programs peg me as a lot younger than I really am, sometime by twenty years or more. This is an effect noticed by PennyWife in her blog Unfair perhaps, but then most women look a lot younger than their actual age.
Except in a couple of cases, skin smoothing and wrinkle/blemish removal with digital makeover programs doesn't seem to make a huge difference to the results (apart from picture A) although it does seem to shave a few more years. I suspect the before and after makeover images here are probably too small to see the visible effect.
