I agree that Face recognition is one of the features that are right up Lightroom's alley. I've been looking at the other "feature requests" and I see that a lot of them really belong in other CS products, however, face recognition is probably one of the key features that will make or break an image catalogue program. I haven't used iPhoto but I've been wanting to. I work in media production and I have a massive library of images that have not been catalogued by subject and I can see as being a very useful feature. Not only to retrofit our current catalog but also to go forward with the hundreds of photos we get each week.

There are things that belong in Photoshop, others in Illustrator, InDesign and even Fireworks, and Face recognition definitely needs to be in Lightroom for it to remain relevant.

R

Just to add to the motion, I too agree that both face tagging and face recognition features would both be very useful.

Jeff

Can I just say I'm disappointed. (Actually I'm going to say a little bit more)

It is beyond me how the Lightroom team can miss this trend (and geotagging).

Usually, the answer I get when I mention this in forums is: "Lightroom is a tool for professionals" -- I don't think so. It is both priced to appeal to a larger audience, and the people who own a DSLR (most of which are not professionals) do use lightroom or aperture. I realize that 'professionals' usually shoot models (and hence a keyword is enough), but 'amateurs' don't -- for any 'reallife' photography both geo- and face-keywording are essential.

If I did not already have my photos in Lightroom - I would (at the moment) probably use picasa to organize them and rawtherapee to develop them. Both are free and there really is not that much more (for the millions of 'amateurs') in the new Lightroom.

It has bothered me from the beginning, but I think it is now slowly crystallizing that Lightroom is never going to be innovative when it comes to organizing your photos. Version three - there really is no excuse! It speaks volumes, that if I try to find a photo in my collection (28'000 files, shot over twenty years) I use explorer and my memory, rather than Lightroom (although I spent weeks carefully organizing photos).

Anyway, I don't think I will update, and am seriously considering getting off the Lightroom train before my data is totally shut in.

Enough of the rant --- can anyone at Adobe please (PLEASE) explain why you don't think organization beyond keywords is important?

numbly,

grovel

Yes, surely face recognition would be a great feature - even more as it is already implemented in Photoshop Elements 8.

Thinking further, also detecting other image content like bridges, houses, cars etc. could be feasible, strongly helping us to reduce the amount of time needed for keywording.

I think that face detection will be available in Apple Aperture. Why? Because it's already available in iPhoto. It's a guess, but I think it will be there. Aperture X (3.0) will be available in Q1/Q2 2010 - there are already books prepared for Aperture X. For example here, scheduled for May 26th, 2010.

And switching from LR to Aperture? Hmm, it depends on your preferences, but Apple Camera Raw is updating slowly - for example today's update brings support for cameras like Nikon D3s, D300s, ... Slow, very slow. Next thing about Aperture is that everything is cooked behind doors. No public betas, ...

I personally dislike LR's UI, crazy shortcuts and forced workflow (Library -> Develop -> ...). I like Aperture's way, I'm using it, but because of slow updates, quiet Apple, no public beta, ... I'm considering switching to LR3 for new projects.

Count this as one more vote for face recognition and tagging in Lightroom.  The feature in Picasa 3 is very impressive, and I was wondering why Adobe hasn't implemented it in Lightroom. 

When the computer can automatically group all photographs that contain a particular person's face, that is an extremely efficient organizing aid for the Lightroom user.  E.g., I have innumerable group shots, tagging them all is a tedious chore.

I too think Face Recognition can be a handy tool. But I think the workaround existing since IPTC does is fine for most and with an efficient captioning tool (sorry I never used LR for this since I very much prefer Camera Bits' Photo Mechanic for this) it is way faster to put "one guy (left) other guy (center) third guy (right) into the caption than to mark all faces with the mouse than enter all the names and skip what needs to be skipped or mark what has been marked. But to help technology evolve it still could be added as it is implemented in iPhoto, Aperture, Picasa, and even Facebook.

Grover: I agree you with the need - or a least advantage - to be able to have the face recognition and the geotagging.

But I completely disagree you on professional photographers ONLY shoot models. I think event, sports, news, documentary and nature photographers are professionals as well and they could very much use both face recognition and geotagging (more or less of course depending on their working area and its needs). And maybe to them it could be even more of a help than to a hobbist. But my point is your arguing is mistaken in regards it could help for all if LR would have this.

rvojta: Apple Aperture 3 is allready out and it does have both Faces and Places (ie. geotagging). It does both quite well, but they too have place to evolve especially with face recognition I think.

Regarding switching to Aperture I think it isn't worth for me. Faces and Places don't give me that much, and even the more advanced Aperture 3 is way too slow on my MacBook Pro compared to LightRoom. I like Apple's interface much better. But in details I prefer most of Adobe's controls. And after all the speed issue once made me choose LightRoom, and now it makes me stay with it.

I only wish for LR to allow me forget the Library stuff and allow me just import and develop my photos.

Tony MacLean: Aperture 3 has this feature but it doesn't change the fact that LightRoom does not have it. Neither does it change that I won't switch to use Aperture instead of LightRoom.

I would like to add my vote for face recognition too. It's not a deal breaker but it would make life a lot easier. Noise correction in Lightroom 3 is so good and really bad in Aperture that is stop me from switching to Aperture. Even if "Face", "Place" and "Book" (portrait orientation is a must for a book module), are missing in Lightroom and it's a big deal for me, quality come first.

Francois

I hope that lighrroom 3 final realese give us "just one more thing" - Face recognition!!

Is there a wya to make an oficial feature request?

I have been using the beta 2 for a few days and really like it. I am not a proffessional but have lot of pictures and would like to have this and other features you can find in the Organizer of PSE (Geotagging is the other one).

I totally agree that to have a standard that also identifies where the people is in the picture would be nice, but for a first release the same time of face recognition we have in the organizer would be very welcome.

Although I can't think of many of my personal pet feature requests I'd give up for it, I have to agree that Lr4 should be ripe for face recognition.

-R

For a free solution for face tagging using face recognition technology, check out Fotobounce.  Available on Windows and Mac.  The latest version has a peer to peer sharing solution that transfers full resolution images across a private peer network with your friends and family.  You also get all the tagging info and face recognition data with each photo; so one person does the tagging and everyone benefits.  http://fotobounce.com

1. Does not support DNG at the present time.

2. Original images are not modified, meta data is stored in a separate DB; however, when images are exported, the tags are exported with the image in XMP format.