iPhoto: Faces

iLife '09 just came out and it contains a new version of iPhoto... which has a new feature called Faces. You tag a photo of someone and then it searches through your entire iPhoto library and suggests people. Here's how it works...

When it was initially installed, it took 16 hours to simply go through every photo in the library and identify a face - not yet assigning it a person. Then you select a photo (or multiple photos) and "tell" iPhoto who it is. Next, you make the computer search and try to find that person. Then, you confirm or reject. Through this process, you "teach" iPhoto who all the people are in your iPhoto library. I don't know how it does it, but it's amazing. The part that I find so crazy it that while my boys look alike, they must be different enough in their features that it know them. For example, I only "told" the computer who Zander was from some recent photos... yet it knows who Zander is from baby pictures! Crazy!