Review: Which Face-Tagging Software Is Best?

Suddenly, facial recognition software is everywhere.

Suddenly, facial recognition software is everywhere. So, Tom's Guide pitted the software titles against each other in a review published today. Apple's iPhoto '09 is the oldest of the bunch--it was launched back in January. Since then, four competitors have arrived. Face.com's Photo Tagger and Microsoft's Windows Live Photo Gallery showed up in July, then came Cyberlink's MediaShow 5 in early September. Finally, Google added photo tagging to its desktop application Picasa 3.5 just a couple weeks ago.

The ability to scan and recognizes faces is fast becoming a must-have feature in all photo organizing and editing software. So, which one should you get? They each excel in different ways. We rated the software titles on these criteria: features and innovation, user interface and ease of use, analysis speed, and accuracy.

You'd be surprised at the false positives some of these software titles think are actually faces (ears, elbows, dogs, and worse). Overall, however, we were impressed with how far this technology has come, and how much easier and more fun hunting for and viewing photos can be when your computer knows who is in them.