Today I’ve been trying out the new face recognition capabilities in Lightroom 6.
As you can see from the above example, there can be a lot of faces to plough through. I’ve been running through the library for about 24 hours and it looks like it’s about half-way through. In terms of numbers, 1,919 faces have been recognised and linked to a name; 6,682 faces have been recognised but remain to be linked to a name. The ability to recognise that a component of a photograph is a face is automated; linking the recognised face to a name is done by me. Some initial observations:
- Its ability to recognise a face is quite good. There are few false positives, meaning things it identifies as a face but are not (e.g., a lump of coal)
- It learns fairly quickly. Within about three or four different photos of a person it seems to be able to pick out images quick regularly. It does not automatically assigned names, rather it prompts to confirm this is Edgar Hertha.
- Prior to getting to that point it seems to be quite “eager” to confirm a new-found face and it applies it to every unknown face. For example, in the above shot you will see it is asking whether three different people are Edgar Hertha.
- Face recognition seems to be quite an intensive process. It really slows down my machine. I hear the fan come on quite regularly.
I am quite excited about face recognition as people are one of the most frequently included subject. Automating this step will facilitate better keywording.
Leave a Reply