Obtaining person-specific images in a public venue

A method of associating a specific person with a specific electronic image within a collection of electronic images containing representations of many persons, the method comprising:

• using a computer for performing the steps of:
• performing facial recognition analysis on each electronic image in the image collection by which a facial identifier is determined for each face represented within each electronic image;
• calculating a confidence level for determining whether a given face representation in a first image is associated with the specific person, wherein the confidence level is computed from the similarity of the facial identifier of the given face representation and the facial identifier of a face representation contained within a second image from the collection, in conjunction with additional information from the first and second images;
• associating the specific electronic image with the specific person if the confidence level exceeds a threshold.

A system for distributing to a user a specific electronic image comprising a representation of a specific person from among a collection of electronic images containing representations of many persons, comprising:

• a facial recognizer that generates a facial identifier for each facial representation within each image;
• an associator that associates each facial identifier with the corresponding person, wherein the associator determines a confidence level that is compared with a predetermined threshold, wherein a confidence level above the threshold indicates the association of a facial identifier to a person, and wherein the confidence level is computed from the similarity of facial identifiers and additional information that can be derived from two different images in the collection;
• a storage device that stores each electronic image in association with the facial identifier of each person represented within the electronic image;
• a reference facial identifier, which is obtained from a source electronic image in which the specific person is represented;
• and a selector which receives the facial identifiers associated with each image from the storage device and which further receives the reference facial identifier and which determines which image to distribute, wherein the selector selects the specific electronic image for distribution on the basis of the similarity of the reference facial identifier to a facial identifier associated with the specific electronic image.