Selfie face recognition: every participant finds their own photos

In a mesgaleries.com gallery, one selfie is enough to find your photos. A trail runner or a party guest takes a picture of themselves in the gallery and only sees the images they appear in. The feature is included in every plan, including the Free plan.

How your clients find their photos

Nothing to sort or tag: faces are analyzed automatically when the photos are uploaded.

1. They open the gallery. Through the link you sent them, or by scanning the QR code displayed on site.
2. They take a selfie. A button opens the phone camera and a guide helps frame the face. A photo already saved on the device works too.
3. They see their photos. Within seconds, the gallery only shows the images the person appears in. They can download them, order prints or run a new search.

In a collaborative gallery, the photos added by guests are searched in the same way as yours.

Which events it is for

It pays off as soon as a gallery gathers many people who are each looking for their own images.

• Trail running, marathons, cycling races: several thousand photos, and runners who have no idea what time they passed the camera.
• Horse shows: hundreds of riders, each finding their rounds without knowing how the gallery is split by class.
• School photography: parents see the photos of their child, and only those.
• Photo booths and parties: a QR code on the booth, a selfie, and the guest leaves with their photos before the party is over.
• Weddings: each guest finds the images they appear in.

The sports photographer, school photographer and photo booth pages go into these uses in detail.

Locking a gallery with a selfie

Without the lock, the whole gallery remains visible and the selfie is used to filter it. With the lock, a visitor sees no image at all until they have taken a picture of themselves. Once recognized, they only reach the photos they appear in.

This is the protection schools, children's sports clubs and holiday camps expect: group photos can be shared without a parent being able to browse those of the other children. The selfie lock is available from the Gold plan.

Protecting image rights

Some people have not given their consent: three students in a class, a guest who prefers not to appear. Rather than retouching every photo, you build a list of faces, from a reference selfie or among the faces detected in the gallery. Blurring then applies to every photo these people appear in, including those added later.

Two modes: blur the people on the list, or keep only the authorized people visible and blur every other face. An account-level list saves you from re-entering the same people from one gallery to the next, handy for a school photographing all of its classes.

Your original files are never modified: blurring can be turned off and the gallery returns to its initial state. Available from the Gold plan. See an example in the article Automatic Face Blurring.

What it changes for the photographer

No more messages like "could you send me my photos, I was wearing bib number 1248". You publish the gallery, share the link, and every participant helps themselves. The option is on by default for every new gallery; you can turn it off where it serves no purpose.

For sales, the difference shows quickly: whoever finds their photos within seconds orders a print from the gallery, whoever has to scroll through thousands of thumbnails gives up.

The selfie itself is used only to find that person's photos: it is never published or added to the gallery, and a gallery's recognition data disappears along with it. Read also the article Facial Recognition for Event Photos and our comparisons with other platforms.