--- In astrofaces@yahoogroups.com, "mosheberlin" <mosheberlin@...> wrote:
>
> Thank you, Luis!

You're welcome.

> I'll investigate that software --
> Do you wish to evaluate some photos of the Clearest Groups? If you do, let me
know if you get good results and I'll add your results to the Statistics page
under your name.

Right now I'm not doing anything. With my prominent Arian Saturn, I tend to work
on impulses and these are fairly unpredictable. I'll let you know when I do
something worth sharing in any case.


>
> Last year I contacted a few companies that make facial recognition software
and they said it wasn't ready for this kind of research yet.

That's what I figured.

What you can do with morphing is to get average "archetypical" faces. As
mentioned, it's often used by anthropometry enthusiasts to create archetypical
faces of ethnic groups. My experience is very limited but seems to work best
when the number of merged photos is large enough and they share some basic
traits (gender is a must if you don't want the result to be shockingly
androginous, similar age may also help and, of course, pics should be clear and
of similar type: frontal ID-type pics are surely ideal).

For your reference, I list here some ethnic facial composites from the site
where I got the reference of the freeware (they may have been done with some
other similar program though):

· European female athletes:
http://dienekes.110mb.com/pictures/composites/femaleathlete/
· East Asian female composites:
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2006/03/chinese-korean-japanese.html
· Riddle of three European male composites:
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2008/04/guess-their-origin-and-rate-their.html
· Study using composites of ancient and modern Greeks:
http://dienekes.110mb.com/pictures/composites/ (might give some ideas on what to
do in our field using composites)
· European male athletes:
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2006/03/geography-of-european-phenotypical.html

Enjoy,
Luis.