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TUTORIAL

Detect, Analyze, and Compare Faces with Amazon Rekognition

Introduction

Overview

In this tutorial, you will learn how to use the face recognition features in Amazon Rekognition using the AWS Management Console. Amazon Rekognition is a deep learning-based image and video analysis service.

As a developer, you might face the challenge of facial recognition and comparison if you are developing an employee verification system, or need to automate video editing or provide secondary authentication for other applications. To solve this, you could develop your own machine learning model, develop an API, and manage your own infrastructure. This option is expensive, requires advanced knowledge, and is time intensive.

An easier route is to use Amazon Rekognition, which can detect faces in an image or video, find facial landmarks such as the position of eyes, and detect emotions such as happy or sad in near-real time or in batches without management of infrastructure or modeling.

In this tutorial, you will use Amazon Rekognition to analyze an image and then compare it to other images to see if the faces are the same.

This tutorial is a demo of the functionality that is available when using the AWS CLI or the Rekognition API. For production or proof of concept implementations, we recommend using these programmatic interfaces rather than the Amazon Rekognition console.

Implementation

Beginner

10 minutes

Free Tier eligible

Amazon Rekognition

July 11, 2022

Enter the Amazon Rekognition console

1. Open the console

Open the AWS Management Console, so you can keep this step-by-step guide open. When the screen loads, enter your user name and password to get started. Then type Rekognition in the search bar and select Rekognition to open the service console.

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Analyze faces

In this step, you will use the facial analysis feature in Amazon Rekognition to see the detailed JSON response you can receive from analyzing one image.

1. Select Facial analysis

To start, select Facial analysis in the panel navigation on the left. This feature allows you to analyze faces in an image and receive a JSON response.

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2. Save the first sample image

Open and save the first sample image for this tutorial here.

Portrait of happy multi-generation family sitting on sofa in living room at home

3. Upload sample image

Click the orange Upload button and select the sample image you just saved.

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4. Review the quick results

Notice that under the Results dropdown, you can click through and see quick results for each face that was detected.

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5. Open the Response dropdown

Click on the Response dropdown to see the JSON results.

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6. View the JSON results

Notice that under the emotions results, there are numerous detected emotions. Happy has a 99.98% confidence rating.

As a developer, detecting emotions in images and videos makes it possible to quickly catalog a digital library by emotion. Another use case for detecting emotions is to amplify ad targeting so users receive a personalized experience tailored to the current emotion.

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Compare faces

In this step, you will use the face comparison feature to see the detailed JSON response from comparing two different images that don't match.

1. Select Face comparison

Select Face comparison in the panel navigation on the left.

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2. Save second sample image

Open and save the second sample image for this tutorial here.

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3. Upload the reference face image

Click on the orange Upload button for the reference face and select the image you just saved.

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4. Select first reference image

Click on the orange Upload button for the comparison face and select our first sample image we used in step 2.

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5. Review the Results

Notice that in Results dropdown you can see that our reference wasn’t a match for any of the detected faces in our comparison faces image.

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6. Review the JSON results

Click on the Response dropdown to see the JSON results. Notice that the “Similarity” score for each of the detected faces never exceeds 1. The similarity score ranges from 1-100 and the threshold can be adjusted when using the API.

As a developer, comparing faces at scale can be used in applications to track persons of interest, create a face-based employee verification system, or provide a VIP experience to guests staying at a hospitality venue.

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Compare faces (again)

In this step, you will use the face comparison feature to see the detailed JSON response from comparing two different images that have a match.

1. Save the sample image

Open and save the third and final sample image for this tutorial here.

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2. Upload the image

Click on the orange Upload button for the reference face and select the image you just saved.

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3. Review the Results

Notice that the reference face that was compared to our other photo detected a 99% similarity score and detected that all other faces were not a match.

Alt-text: Amazon Rekognition interface showing a face comparison tool with reference and comparison faces, similarity results displayed on the right.

4. Review the JSON results

Click on the Response dropdown to see the details of each comparison.

Screenshot of the AWS Rekognition console showing a JSON response with face matching data, including a similarity score of 99.9965% and confidence of 99.9786%.

Conclusion

You have learned how to use the console to analyze and compare faces. You can also perform this feature using the API so you can operate at scale. Use Amazon Rekognition when you need to perform facial analysis at scale without worrying about infrastructure or training a model for identifying persons of interest, cataloging a digital library, creating a face-based employee verification system, or performing sentiment analysis.