“Faces. Places. In a nutshell, that’s how Apple is polishing up the latest version of its iPhoto photo-management program. IPhoto promises to recognize the subjects in your photographs. And the locations where pictures were snapped,” Ed Baig reports for USA Today. “These new tools are handy. But Faces comes with some blemishes.”

“iPhoto ’09 shows up this week as part of Apple’s iLife ’09 software suite. It joins sweet new versions of iMovie and GarageBand and is rounded out more modestly by iDVD and iWeb. The programs come on new Macs or are sold at retail for $79,” Baig reports. “The inclusion of iLife software is a major reason I have found Mac computers so appetizing.”

“The Faces feature uses face detection and recognition technologies to locate actual mugs (the process is done in the background) and determine who the people are… In the handsome Faces view, a single snapshot is shown on a corkboard for every person whose face you’ve identified. Double-click on a face to see all the underlying images — convenient when you’re trying to find just the right image of your kid… Alas, mistaken identities are common. If a person is wearing a hat or sunglasses in one picture but discards them in another, the program might miss out on a potential match,” Baig reports.

“Siblings are sometimes difficult to discern. Age is another factor,” Baig reports. “Pictures of my daughter at age 4 or 5 were not necessarily matched up with pictures of her as a 1- or 2-year-old.”

MacDailyNews Take: Many people today have lost complete touch with reality. They think that magic is real, they’ve come to expect it, and they’re disappointed when their unrealistic expectations are, naturally, unrealized. We blame parents, a gene-pool unfettered by natural selection, public schools, television, CG-effects-laden films, video games, and the late Doug Henning. In that order.

Baig continues, “Face recognition doesn’t work with pets.”

MacDailyNews Note: Not so fast, Ed: For Apple’s iPhoto ‘09, cats are people, too: ‘Faces’ feature also works on the feline persuasion – January 28, 2009

Baig continues, “Even with errors, face recognition provides a shortcut to tagging a bunch of images. And the program gets smarter as you confirm or reject more names.”

Much more in the full review here.