Faces: Face Detection and Face Recognition in iPhoto

I am having way too much fun (and spending way too much time) playing around with my new iPhoto '09.

According to the Apple website, "iPhoto uses face detection to identify faces of people in your photos and face recognition to match faces that look like the same person."

Here's how it works: First iPhoto analyzes all of the photos in your library. Then you put a name to a face in a couple of photos, and iPhoto suggests a set of possible matches which you then can confirm with a click. iPhoto uses the information to sift through your photo library and find more potential matches.

Once you’ve added names, the Faces view shows a corkboard with a snapshot for each person you’ve named. When you click any snapshot, you see all the confirmed and suggested photos of that person.

It is kind of an addicting activity. Most of the time it gets the face right once you've entered a few manually. What amazed me is that it found and correctly identified one picture of Daughter #4 when she was a young child. Pretty cool.

I love the corkboard with a close-up snapshot of all of my favorite people!