Automatic Face Image Tagging in Large Collections

Abstract

In this chapter, the authors present some issues related to automatic face image tagging techniques. Their main purpose in user applications is to support the organization (indexing) and retrieval (or easy browsing) of images or videos in large collections. Their core modules include algorithms and strategies for handling very large face databases, mostly acquired in real conditions. As a background for understanding how automatic face tagging works, an overview about face recognition techniques is given, including both traditional approaches and novel proposed techniques for face recognition in uncontrolled settings. Moreover, some applications and the way they work are summarized, in order to depict the state of the art in this area of face recognition research. Actually, many of them are used to tag faces and to organize photo albums with respect to the person(s) presented in annotated photos. This kind of activity has recently expanded from personal devices to social networks, and can also significantly support more demanding tasks, such as automatic handling of large editorial collections for magazine publishing and archiving. Finally, a number of approaches to large-scale face datasets as well as some automatic face image tagging techniques are presented and compared. The authors show that many approaches, both in commercial and research applications, still provide only a semi-automatic solution for this problem.