With my abstaining from social media sites (e.g. facebook, twitter, etc.), I have been finding other things to do (and waste time) on my computer. One of those things is identifying people on our photos. Both my husband and I have become the unofficial historians of our families. We appreciate family history and love to record and store old photos. One way to preserve these photos is to scan them onto your computer into a program such as Picasa.
Picasa is great. A really neat thing it does is facial identification/recognition or "name tags". It will go through all of your photos and single out each individual in those photos. So say you have a huge class photo, it will make an entry for each of those people and for you to identify. Once you have identified a person, a new file will be created that will contain all the pictures of that person. It is a great way to take a peak into how a person has changed over the years. The program will even guess sometimes if someone is who they think they are and put them in their file for you to check. For example, it will place a photo of Miss M into her file with a question mark whether or not it is her. Sometimes it will put a picture of C into M's file or vice versa. This just shows that it is not a perfect system and that the girls do in fact resemble each other.
I have over four thousand images to identify so it is a long process but one that I am enjoying. I like seeing these photos in a new light. It focuses on the individual instead of the things in the photo that might distract. I have been able to see how some family members look more alike than I ever thought they did.
You can learn more about Picasa here. It is a free download and easy to use.
Do you use anything to identify your photos? If so, what and how do you like it?
I love Picasa and thought I would share my experiences. No one asked me to write about it...just wanted to share the love.
