Photo tagging on Facebook
may soon be wasted effort

Tagging photos of friends and family by hand may soon become a thing of yesteryear. An updated version of Google's photo-sharing service, Picasa 3, will include facial recognition capabilities.

The technology, available to Google via its 2006 acquisition of Neven Vision, matches facial details to images in a centralized database.

Updating the database on Picasa is a fairly simple process:

Step One - Label the faces in your photos.
Step Two - Allow Google to search and index the rest of your pictures for the same face, to which it will assign the same name.
Step Three - Upload more pictures. Picasa will suggest tags for people based on the similarities between their face in the picture and the tags already in place for them.

For a subject's face to be indexed, s/he must be facing the camera directly — a demand that sounds small enough, but oddly few people face cameras head-on. Mike Horowitz, Google Picasa's product manager, also admitted other factors may prevent the technology from matching faces, like shadows or poor lighting conditions.

Another issue Google must address is the ease with which online stalkers will be able to hunt down users tagged by Picasa. A search for someone's name could bring up all images of someone whose photos were publicly indexed by Picasa.

In any event, Google's planned release of Picasa 3 beta's image-editing software will include the facial recognition feature, as well as tools like collage mode, online synchronization, slideshow viewer, and a retouch brush for unsightly blemishes and red eyes. Improving Picasa's ability to index and recognize faces may bring the online giant a step closer to perfecting its own facial recognition software standard for advertising.