Everything You Need to Know About Face Matching Technology!

Face-Matching is a game-changing technology that -

1) Automatically tags candid photos with student names.
2) Allows for search by name across all student photos.
3) Provides 'coverage reports' with detail on student placement in the book.

This feature will save a lot of time for yearbook staff, and if fully utilized can improve the value of the yearbook for everyone! Read on to learn how.

Here's How It Works

1. Advisers need to confirm their understanding and acceptance of local and state guidelines to enable this feature.

2. Then, Pixami's Face Matching technology will automatically analyze the face in each student portrait, and create a database of unique facial characteristics for each student portrait.

3. Next the software will analyze all candid photos using this database, and tag all recognized photos with the students name!

Here Are Some Key Benefits

• Pixami's Face-Matching technology will save lots of time (and mistakes) over the traditional, manual process of identifying and naming students.
• It will allow you to search all photos for a student by name, which is a huge time saver. And when looking at student candid photos, you will almost always know who is in the photo, automatically.
• The Coverage Report feature will allow you to view the students that are most represented, and least represented in the yearbook, and make adjustments. You can use this data to ensure 'student' equity', or equal representation, in the yearbook. 
• You can even use this technology as part of your sales efforts by, for example, committing to parents that every student will be represented exactly 3 times.
• Or, cross-reference student data with sales data, making sure everyone knows they're in the yearbook, and making sure those who are most represented have purchased.

This feature really is a game-changer, and we look forward to your input, ideas and feedback. 

Handling Privacy Concerns or Objections

'AI' is a hot topic in the news these days, and as such we expect that we may have school or parent concerns about Pixami's use of this technology. Below are some important points that we hope will address any concerns.  Please feel free to share and comment on this article.

• Pixami's Face-Matching technology only uses name and photo data that has already been provided, for the purpose of saving time and improving accuracy.
• This technology replaces an existing manual process that required a software user to type the names of each student to each candid photo. This technology accomplishes the exactly same thing - except automatically and with more accuracy.
  
• This technology is internal to the yearbook software, and subject to the same thorough and strict privacy policy that already exists for user data. It’s hosted with the Pixami software in a secure, state-of-the-art environment at Amazon (AWS).
  
• This technology is already used daily by nearly everyone: it’s embedded in most mobile devices, numerous photo and related apps, search engines, and most social media.
  
• Pixami’s implementation of this technology is based on code that’s been utilized and proven in mass market school software products, including by PicID in the school ID space. It has been thoroughly tested for accuracy, performance and security. 
  
• Pixami is one of the first to offer this technology to the yearbook market, but we anticipate this technology will be universal in the marketplace in the future. We'll strive to keep our level of functionality, privacy and security at the forefront for our customers and their schools.

Other Things to Know

• Face-matching is now inherent in all Pixami yearbook and directory publishing products. 
• Once Portraits have been uploaded and the technology begins running, you will see the names appear in several locations for your candid photos. New candids will be processed as they are added.
• This is a server-intensive process. Therefore, the more Candid images on the server for your school, the longer it will take to process them.
  Pixami has always promoted the best practice of organizing your photos offline initially, and then uploading the final yearbook candidates to the software. This practice will improve face-matching performance.
  For your planning purposes, the 'typical' yearbook contains 1000 candid photos, with 3000 uploaded. Understanding every school has different needs, we recommend this as a basic guideline for best face-matching performance.