Detect photographs containing people

[BatchFile]

As part of the current push on safeguarding, I need a gadget to detect photographs with faces (or at least people or lots of skintone) in them. Preferably free, but if needs must...

Any suggestions on which software can do that?

Our shared areas have literally thousands of photos on them - some vital to coursework in various subjects - but also many containing photos of pupils doing various things that we don't have photo consent for. As they're on shared areas, all the pupils, teachers, office staff etc etc have unrestricted access to them so at the moment it's not up to scratch so I need to do something pronto to move them, but not the photos needed for coursework, to a more secure area.

[ninjabeaver]

I think the new version of SECURUS can do that. Might also be worth looking at SMOOTHWALL if you don't have that in already.

[RinSewand]

Hi,

If you don't find a commercial solution I've a friend who spent a while recently writing face detection software for use with security cameras and live video feeds. It also identified faces from a datebase (allowing you to import some pictures of say, staff, who's photos you could still use, etc) I'm sure he'd be able to adapt it to do what you require. Fire me a PM if you want me to grab his details.

RwD

[BatchFile]

I'm not particularly worried about pictures on the web, the LEA filters (and our ISA server if necessary) take care of that so Smoothwall isn't really what I'm after and Securus looks a bit heavy handed for this task alone

[chrbb]

We have a shared area specifically for photos, these remain on the server and are used for displays and the digital photo frame within school. If the photos remain on the server and aren't accessible to the public ie website, newspaper surely thats not a problem is it?

[BatchFile]

Apparantly so, these days! It's ok for staff to have access to everything, but not pupils as they can be taken home, used for bullying etc.

[jumpinjamez]

I am tired if all this "think of the children" education is the key not restriction.

As we move towards a fully digital world student will use photos and blogs etc to post bad things like they would have wrote notes graffiti and drawn images of others that were offensive.

They want technology to help T&L and then say its unsafe for children to use.

[dhicks]

I need a gadget to detect photographs with faces (or at least people or lots of skintone) in them.

I understand the latest version of Google Picasa does face-recognition. Picasa isn't designed to work on a network share, though - it stores meta-data in separate files alongside the images, which then gets overwritten if two copies of Picasa are operating in the same area. You need a quick script to replicate your images store using hard links, then create a share just for Picasa to use from that replicated store.

--
David Hicks

[BatchFile]

I am tired if all this "think of the children" education is the key not restriction.

As we move towards a fully digital world student will use photos and blogs etc to post bad things like they would have wrote notes graffiti and drawn images of others that were offensive.

They want technology to help T&L and then say its unsafe for children to use.

Insufficient evidence of safeguarding = OFSTED failure
So if you don't mind, until they've been, and they'll be here any day now, I'll do what I can!

Long term I've got a MOODLE solution in mind for shared areas - but they need cleaning up, now!

[srochford]

Picasa is absolutely brilliant at face detection and if you just want to say "these pictures contain faces" and you can them move, delete, whatever those pictures then I think it will do the job.

Be warned that it can take quite a bit of time if you've got thousands of photos!

[BatchFile]

Looks like Picasa is what I needed - It's scanning the shared areas now 8149 pictures found so far

CHeers!