Face Swapping

This is a great implementation of automatic face swapping in digital photographs. I hadn't thought of it before, but I suppose it is a natural extension of the face-detection algorithms in even budget cameras today.

In fact, I remember seeing a new point and shoot that has a special burst mode for group shots, where it takes 3 pictures which can be merged in software later to get a photo with everyone's eyes open. I can't find the link now. However, I used to do a similar thing at family parties, with a tripod and the camera's timer. I would take a few shots, and try to combine them later in Photoshop.

I tried this software from Microsoft, which unfortunately looks like it was abandoned. When I used it, it didn't work amazingly well, but I suspect that was due to each shot being of ~30 people, which is tougher for the algorithm than a few. I would've been interested to see this or similar photo software develop at MS- they do seem to know what they're doing. Photosynth was another promising example- which hasn't been updated in a year. What's going on, Microsoft?? I've heard some mutterings about Seadragon (navigation of arbitrarily large photo sets!), which Photosynth is based on, but nothing else. I guess Microsoft would rather spend their enormous resources pushing out Silverlight, which has shown me absolutely nothing and is a shameless repackaging of Flash so that MS can control the market, than on two truly innovative ideas.


Tangent over- back to the original software. It's pretty clear that this face switcher is useful, and there are good examples on their page. I'm interested in where we go from here- what's the next big thing in photo manipulation? Between face detection and seam carving, there's been some cool things lately, but what comes next? And will it be an in-camera revolution, or a post production enhancement?

Face detection is interesting because it is probably the only new feature since digital was invented that truly takes advantage of digital- i.e., something that wouldn't have happened in film cameras. Everyone can be happy with a feature that reduces the amount of photos with the wrong piece of the scene in focus! In addition to face detection, there have been plenty of other enhancements, which have mostly revolved around making it easier to take good photos. I'm thinking of horizon guides, live histograms with blinking highlights, scene modes, and moving object tracking. Even the adoption of image stabilization has done wonders for blurry photo syndrome. So, what else can digital do to create a new feature set?

You know, I really can't think of anything right now. I hope I will later, but for now- any ideas?