Face Detection and Recognition Homepage

Face Detection Homepage: Facial recognition and finding

The Face Detection Technology Homepage

by Dr. Robert Frischholz

This page is focused on the task of automatically detecting faces in images.
It is a tribute to Peter Kruizinga’s Face Recognition Homepage
(which unfortunately has disappeared many years ago… Click on this link to still browse the site, using the archive of the Wayback Machine)

Here is the successor of the Face Recognition Homepage

Preface: The recognition of human faces is not so much about face recognition at all – it is much more about face detection / face finding! It has been proven that the first step in automatic facial recognition – the accurate detection of human faces in arbitrary scenes, is the most important process involved. When faces can be located exactly in any scene, the recognition step afterwards is not so complicated anymore. This is why this page tries to gather all available information about the process of automatically detecting faces!


Latest news: February 2022 – New and updated Image Search Engines


Welcome Face Recognition & Detection Researchers around the World!

This site tries to collect all useful information about finding a human face in an image. Very much research is going on in this area. Therefore, the information is grouped into several categories, which are listed on the menu of the page. Please follow those navigation buttons to explore the contents of this site. A short description of the categories:

Software Face Detection Software: Links to public domain or commercial Software (SDK, API, Web Service)
Datasets Face Detection Datasets: Face image databases (datasets) useful for face finding
Links Face Detection Research: References to research sites for face localization
Algorithms Face Detection Algorithms: Explanations and links to common principles of locating faces
Publications Face Detection Publications: Selected publications about facial detection
Online Face Image Search Web-based face finder demos, also for People Image Search
Presentation Attack Detection All about live or fake face images
Misc Some miscellaneous but possibly interesting stuff

Please note that this page concentrates on the detection, i.e. the finding of the location of a human face within an image. Recognizing them is a step made after they have been found. Even though many algorithms or datasets are suitable for both tasks, this site concentrates more on the (preprocessing) step of face finding.
The results of this step are coordinates: In the easiest case it is a bounding rectangle. Or the x/y location of the eyes. Or a set of coordinates for many facial features (landmarks) which are helpful to normalize each face accordingly.


Some background information about this page: My name is Robert, and I am into face detection / recognition way back since ~ 1995. I started this page as a hobby in 1998. Although I am actually still professionally involved into biometrics, this page shall always be a scientific, not a commercial one. Without any bias.
If I forgot any important resources, please send me all material that you think should be put here, by writing an email to webmaster@facedetection.com. Thank you!


face recognition online and face detection finding software Homepage