Picasa 3.5 comes with Face Recognition

September 24, 2009

googlewebsiteimages

Google released Picasa 3.5 yesterday, with some cool features. In keeping with Picasa Web Albums enhancements,  Developers have added face recognition and geo tags to their photo-organizer-slash-jack-of-all-trades software.

http://picasa-readme.blogspot.com/

With name tags, you can organize your photos based on what matters most: the people in them

As soon as the announcement came, I installed Picasa 3.5 – eager to try the new features. As it seems, face recognition is activated from start , no warning whatsoever, but you do need to login to your picasa account to get your name tags.

Processing seems a bit longer than usual, as with the old version, you can still use the application even while it’s still sorting through all your stuff – so no worries. Picasa 3.5 got almost 100% from my tests. I already tagged faces on Web Albums so I didn’t had the chance to tag new faces. But I’m amazed how good this works even if the person is facing front or showing their profile. Nevertheless, your results may vary depending on how distinct people in your photos are. If it’s anything like Picasa Web Albums, the engine should improve in time the more you use it.

Its a great addition to Picasa. It eases the pain of digging all your albums to find people. I know I’ll be abusing this one for a long time. 🙂

Download Picasa 3.5
Image from http://parenting.leehansen.com