Who are the look-alikes in your family? A new free facial recognition web app compares your pictures to see just how strong those family resemblances are!

Recently I saw an article online that practically begged me to read it: “22 Photos Which Prove That Your Genes are Amazing.” It shows a series of “photographs of people who, despite belonging to different generations within their families, are as alike as two peas in a pod.” (Take a look! Those photos are pretty cool!)

Of course, that got me thinking about the look-alikes in my own family, and I had to find and compare their pictures. I came across these two sets of look-alikes. Unfortunately, their faces are not posed or angled the same direction, but when I look at those faces, I am struck by their physical resemblance to each other.

The first pair is my sister-in-law and her Great Aunt Alpha Larson. In the past when I came across Alpha’s photograph I always felt there was a strong resemblance to her sister’s grand daughter. But it wasn’t until I looked at them side-by-side that I realized how many traits they share: the arch of their eyebrows, the shape of their eyes, and even their teeth.

When it comes to comparing faces, there are many features you can compare:

However, Apple, Microsoft and Google have incorporated facial recognition technology into their indigenous photo management apps, which are free to use. Face Recognition Apps to Tag Photos on Mac Here is an attempt to list some of the well-known face recognition apps that automatically tag the pictures stored on your local machine. KeyLemon is a face recognition security system software for both laptop and desktop user, as the name implies, it automatically locks your computer when you move away and unlock it when you are back. With its patented webcam face recognition software technology, you can rest assure that your computer is safe from praying eyes. Divx Cataloger Mac Free 878. Download Edb To Pst Recovery 916. Tocco Lite 1,112. Employee Chart 867. Mac Face Recognition Software 855. Mac Face Recognition Web.

Facial Recognition Software Mac

• The shape of the face (is it oval, round, square or heart-shaped?)
• Teeth (Look for unique shapes and spaces)
• Eyes (analyze the shape, color, size and spacing between the eyes)
• Eyebrows (shape, length, and distance to the eye)
• Nose (position on the face, the size and shape, and pay close attention to the nostrils)
• Ears (where they are positioned on the head, their shape and size)
• Hair pattern (taking into account the age of the person)
• Moles and other distinguishing marks

All this got me wondering…is there a free online tool that will let us use facial recognition technology to compare two faces? I got Googling…and there is!

A new free facial recognition web app compares your pictures to see just how strong those family resemblances are! Two Peas in a Pod Recently I saw an article online that practically begged me to read it: “ 22 Photos Which Prove That Your Genes are Amazing.”. Download BioID Facial Recognition and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. ‎The BioID app is a multifactor user authenticator – see how well face recognition works today! Developers and companies can easily add biometric authentication to their mobile platforms with a few lines of code.

Microsoft’s Twins or Not facial comparison web app recently launched. It’s so new they’re still refining it. But it works and it’s super easy to use.

I fed in my first two lookalikes and the results came up as a 58% match: pretty astounding for a three-degree difference in blood relation (from a grand-daughter two generations up to her grandmother, then one person over to her sister).

The second match wasn’t quite as strong: just 39%. That’s still pretty striking for four degrees of difference on the family tree!

I was curious about how the look-alike relatives shown in that article would rank in Twins or Not. So I clipped a couple of photos from there and ran them through. Below is the stunning result: a 100% match (which is no surprise–these babies are SO alike).

This kind of service is trending in mobile apps too (even for your pets!), though most of the available apps help you find your celebrity look-alike.

Other software programs that can be used to assist with facial recognition include:

• Face Off (free online download)
• iPhoto (by Apple – included on Apple computers)
• PhotoShop Elements (by Adobe Systems)

Who are the look-alikes in your family? Why not take a screenshot of your results at Twins or Not and share it with us–and on your favorite social media site?

Better yet, share your look-alikes with your family. It’s a fun way to kick start conversations about family history. Remind your family members that you’re not just interested in the lives of your shared ancestors, but also preserving your family’s stories.

Are you interested in learning more about exploring your family history, and the tools that can help you do that? I’m constantly on the look-out for tech tools that can make your genealogy research more productive and fun. Here are three Genealogy Gems articles that will give you the inside scoop on what’s available and what I use personally:

Facial Recognition Security Software

I think this would be a really fun post to share with friends and loved ones! Will you share it by email or on social media? Thanks!

So you are looking for face detection software. You hit the right place!

There are basically two approaches. The classical one is to get some code (source or compiled as a library) and use it within your own application.
A list of source codes, libraries, Software Development Kits, is listed below.
The second emerging approach is to use the power of the Internet, and call web or cloud services. Let’s start with the most modern concept:

WEB SERVICES for Face Detection & Recognition

By using web services, the client software does not need to bother about libraries or platform dependencies. It simply calls a web server, sends the images to process, and gets back the results. As long as real-time feedback is not an issue, this is an interesting new approach. (If you know of a Web Service that is not listed here, please contribute the information on the Contact page and it will get added).

• BioID Face Recognition Web Service

  Service for identifying persons by face (and/or voice). Finds faces and sends back standardized face portraits. All methods can be tried with file upload or live webcam recording. There is also a free iOS and Android App offered to use the service for face login. Needs anonymous registration and is free for single users.

• Betaface Web API

  Service for face and facial features finding and recognition. Web API including demos, documentation and samples of usage. Free for evaluation or education purposes as well as non-commercial projects.

• Face++

  Face++ uses technologies of computer vision and data mining to provide 3 core vision services (Detection, Recognition, and Analysis). Free. Needs registration.
  

• Microsoft Project Oxford

  Microsoft’s cloud-based face algorithms to detect and recognize human faces in images. Needs registration, currently free up to 5000 usages/month.
  

• Google Vision API

  Google’s cloud-based image content analysis preview. Includes face detection (no recognition), but also other interesting things like logo detection, adult scene detection, and many others. Limited preview only, but free to use currently.
  

• FaceR API

  Face recognition Web API from Animetrics, Inc. Offers face finding and recognition. Needs registration to obtain an API key.
  

• Meerkat Facial Recognition

  Face recognition Web API. Free for up to 1000 calls/month.
  

• DeepSight Computer Vision SDK

  Face detection & recognition service from BaseApp Systems, India.
  

• FaceX Face Recognition APIs

  Face detection/recognition service from Codeeverest Private Limited, India. Up to 5K “API calls” are free.
  

FREEWARE for face finding and facial recognition

The bad thing about the internet nowadays is, that you will not find much open source code around anymore. Nevertheless, here is a (hopefully growing) list of what’s available for free…

• Google Mobile Vision API

  Android Mobile Vision API. This differs from the Google Vision API in that it runs on-device (i.e., no need to communicate with a cloud server). The API supports detecting frontal faces, faces in different poses (e.g., profiles), facial landmarks, etc. and can track faces in video.

• Dlib C++ Library

  Dlib is a general purpose cross-platform C++ library with many machine-learning related algorithms. Version 1.8 introduced the histogram-of-oriented-gradient (HOG) based object detection, a very powerful technique, very useful for detecting faces. Open Source, free download!
  

• Imacondis Face SDK

  Imacondis Face SDK is a set of software development tools that allows the creation of applications for face detection, recognition and verification.
  Algorithms and SDK based on many years of research also conducted at Warsaw University of Technology. Trial version for non-commercial use.
  

• A Modern Computer Vision Library (libccv)

  Includes a frontal face detector using SURF cascades. Source code in C is available at Github

• Libfacedetection

  A fast binary library (DLL) for face detection and face landmark detection in images. Free of charge for any purpose (according to the author).

• Facial landmark detector

  “flandmark” is an open source C library (with interface to MATLAB) implementing a facial landmark detector in static images. From the Center of Machine Perception, Czech Technical University, Prague.

• Semantic Vision Technologies

  Face and facial features detection libraries for MS Windows. Free for non-commercial use! From Jacek Naruniec, Warsaw University of Technology, Poland.

• Face Detection using Support Vector Machine (SVM)

  Includes both datasets and code for face detection using Support Vector Machines.

• Rank Deficient Faces

  Face detection demo with library for MS Windows platforms.

• Visage

  Visage is a human computer interface that aims to replace the traditional mouse with the face.

• Face Tracking DLL from Carnegie Mellon

  The Advanced Multimedia Processing Lab (AMP) offers face tracking using color matching combined with deformable templates. Both DLL for Windows and static library for Linux.

• SHORE: Real-time face detection program from FhG-IIS

  Demo from the Fraunhofer Institute IIS, Germany. Shows face tracking and detection using edge orientation matching. Fast multi-face finding capabilities. SDK available on demand.

• Evaluation of Face Recognition Algorithms

  Resource for all researchers developing face recognition algorithms from Colorado State University. It provides a standard set of well known algorithms and established experimental protocols. Includes C source code for face recognition using PCA (Eigenfaces) and Gabor Wavelets!

• OpenCV – Intel’s Open Source Computer Vision initiative

  Now this is really interesting: Intel initiates an open source community for computer vision. C++ source code for face recognition, motion tracking, and many others. There’s also a mailing list for contributors. Highly recommended! With source code.

  Visit OpenCV at Sourceforge

  Visit OpenCV forum at Yahoo

• Computer Vision Source Code

  Not really about face detection, but nevertheless a very useful collection of image processing code you might need when working in this area. With source code.

COMMERCIAL FACE RECOGNITION SOFTWARE

(as of Jun-11-2017)

There is a growing number of face recognition software vendors around who offer SDKs (Software Development Kits) for integrating their technology into own applications. Most of them offer the face finding part as an interface. Nevertheless, it might be hard to get such an SDK without payment…
(in alphabetical order:)

If you know of a commercial SDK about facial finding & recognition that is not listed here, please contribute the information on the Contact page and it will get added!