Method, system and computer program for identification and sharing of digital images with face signatures

A method for sharing a digital image depicting one or more faces, the method comprising:

• enabling a remote web browser, desktop application, or a mobile device to access a proxy server;
• at the proxy server,
• receiving a digital image;
• executing a face detection routine and a face recognition routine on the digital image, the face detection routine involving generating one or more face coordinates corresponding to one or more candidate regions for one or more faces;
• the face recognition routine producing a list of one or more persons whose faces are depicted in the digital image, by for each of the one or more candidate regions, generating a face signature using one or more projection images defined by the face coordinates, comparing the face signature with one or more known face signatures to determine a distance value for each comparison, determining a best match between the face signature and the known face signatures and comparing the best match to a similarity threshold, the best match determining an identity of a person in the list of one or more persons corresponding to at least one of the one or more faces;
• and enabling the proxy server to initiate a sharing routine for disseminating the digital image to computer terminals associated with the one or more persons, wherein the face signature is generated by:
• translating, rotating, and scaling the candidate region to a normalized image;
• masking the normalized image to define a masked image wherein the face is isolated to a region;
• applying a contrast adjustment to the masked image.

A computer device for recognizing one or more faces in a digital image, the device comprising:

• a storage device receiving and storing a digital image;
• at least one proxy server configured to execute a face detection routine and a face recognition routine, the face detection routine involving generating one or more face coordinates corresponding to one or more candidate regions for one or more faces;
• the face recognition routine involving, for each of the one or more candidate regions, generating a face signature using one or more projection images defined by the face coordinates, comparing the face signature with one or more known face signatures to determine a distance value for each comparison, determining a best match between the face signature and the known face signatures and comparing the best match to a similarity threshold, the best match determining an identity corresponding to at least one of the one or more faces, and making available results of the face recognition routine, wherein the face signature is generated by:
• translating, rotating, and scaling the candidate region to a normalized image;
• masking the normalized image to define a masked image wherein the face is isolated to a region;
• applying a contrast adjustment to the masked image.