Google adds facial recognition to Picasa photo sharing

In launching the public beta of Picasa 3 this week, Google also updated its online Picasa Web Albums space with facial recognition.

The new "name tags" tool on Google's Web Albums photo publishing site is based on technology garnered through Google's buyout of biometric specialist Neven Vision back in August 2006.

Name tags "gives you the power to quickly label and organize your photos based on who's in each picture," maintained Mike Horowitz, a product manager at Google.

The capability uses technology that Google refers to as "clustering" in an effort to let you group together photos of friends and family members without the drudgery of tagging each photo individually. You start out by identifying people in your photos that haven't been tagged yet. Then, after you've named these people, Picasa Web Albums begins to suggest tags for future photo uploads based on perceived similarities in facial features.

Finally, you can tell Web Albums to "show me all photos of Mom and Dad," for example -- and in theory, at least, all of your photos of Mom and Dad will come up as a group.

Meanwhile, version 3 of Google's Picasa desktop photo organizing software -- which entered public beta yesterday -- is designed to work more seamlessly with Web Albums, according to Horowitz.

"New controls in Picasa 3 make it much easier to quickly upload photos, and we've added a new 'sync to Web' feature that automatically updates online albums when you add or edit photos on your computer," he remarked in a blog post yesterday.

The new controls are aimed at letting you manage the online settings in Picasa Web Albums through a corresponding folder or album in Picasa 3.

Picasa 3 also includes a lot of other new features, including new tools for image retouching, movie making, adding text and watermarks to photos, printing captions, and importing screen captures and webcam captures.