For one, we're using a test bed of photos that's almost entirely 12-megapixel JPEG files, whereas some people may be shooting smaller or larger files that may be in different formats and contain large groups of people-something that can slow these programs down. To be fair, our results may not scale, or match the experience you will have. Using 500 sample photos on fresh installs of each program, we tracked around how long each of the tools took to process all the photos, as well as some notable hits and misses from each.
So, how do these three stack up? To figure that out, we put them to the test. And this time last year, Microsoft released an updated version of its Windows Live Photo Gallery desktop software that could find faces inside of photos, though it couldn't (and still can't) recognize who's in them. In January, Apple unveiled the latest version of iLife, which included an updated version of iPhoto that could detect and recognize faces in your photos. But it wasn't the first free consumer photo-editing software to find faces.
Last week's Picasa software update from Google brought with it a neat trick-facial recognition.
