Face Swap For PC Archives

As a professional photographer, you probably take hundreds if not thousands of photos every time you shoot. But how do you store and keep track of all of those photos, as well as share them with clients, and keep your intellectual property safe? To answer these questions, we’ve rounded up some of our favorite photo manager apps and broken down what makes each of them unique, so that you can choose the best photo management software for your photography business.

Before You Get Started

The right photo management software will free up valuable time and effort so that you can focus your attention where it actually needs to be: on developing your skills and turning your side hustle into a profitable business. One way to impress potential clients is by showcasing your work and offering quick, easy purchasing options, so set up your portfolio alongside an online store to turn website viewers into paying customers.

Best Photo Management Software

Adobe Bridge CC

Adobe Bridge CC is an ideal photo management software for users of other Adobe Creative Cloud programs like Photoshop or Illustrator. Adobe Bridge is free with the purchase of another Adobe program, and the interface will be easy to figure out for those experienced in using Adobe products. You are able to import photos (along with their thumbnails and metadata) directly from your camera, card reader or mobile device, with the ability to bulk import, export and preview images. Then, save valuable time by editing photos in batches, creating a unifying color scheme throughout one group of photos. Add a watermark to protect your work and promote your business before uploading to Adobe Stock, where you can earn royalties from your stock photography.

CyberLink PhotoDirector 10

CyberLink PhotoDirector 10 is a great option for a photo management software that works on multiple operating systems and with a variety of common file types including RAW image files. This photo manager has a simple interface that makes it easy to learn how to operate, so you won’t waste time getting bogged down in the details of learning an entirely new program. In terms of organizing your photo and video files, you can tag and search by keyword, date, color, location, and faces you’ve tagged. You can also create slideshows from your photos, complete with background music, transitions and effects, and then share them directly to Youtube.

Along with its photo management software, PhotoDirector 10 also has an extensive set of photo editing tools, from simple to more complex details. If you’re new to editing photos or you just don’t have the time to edit your photos right away, PhotoDirector 10’s automatic adjustment options will provide a great start that you can build off of later on. On the more advanced side, this software also had options for cosmetic retouching, like removing wrinkles or blemishes, fixing red eyes, whitening teeth, and there’s even a tool for reshaping bodies.

On the downside, this photo manager doesn’t automatically recognize and sort images by the people in them, so you’ll have to tag those individually if you want to organize your photos that way. However, PhotoDirector 10 offers a pretty cool feature called Video to Photo Face Swap, which is designed for getting a perfect group photo even when one or more of your group may be blinking. With this technology, you can grab a photo directly from a video, and then swap a face in the frame you chose for a different frame where your subject is smiling. This can come in handy especially for wedding photography, when you really need every single detail to be perfect for your client.

Other cool editing features include the ability to create a seamless panoramic image by selecting multiple photos through HDR imaging. If you have video footage, you can create multi-exposure photos, or use the Vibrant Motion Stills feature to create a cinemagraph, where only one part of the video moves. For photographers working with 360° photos, you’ll be able to edit those as well as create panoramas from them. Remove poor weather conditions like smog or haze with the Dehaze slider, and remove unwanted objects in just a few simple clicks. You can even do graphic design work using this photo manager’s advanced layer editing to combine images, text and graphics and create captivating content.

You’ll also be able to connect your camera to your computer while you’re shooting, and then immediately view and edit your images on your desktop. Perhaps the most compelling feature of all, Soft Proofing allows you to see how your images will print so you can make the necessary adjustments before you spend time and money getting things printed. As well as these features, you received 25 GBs of online storage completely free, and you’ll receive reminders to back up your work from the app. You can access this online from multiple devices, and there are phone apps for both Android and iOs operating systems. If that isn’t enough, there’s also an active online community of users where you can ask questions about the photo management software or even get feedback on your photography.

Unlike some other photo management apps, there is no password protection with PhotoDirector 10, and you won’t be able to burn photos or slideshows directly to a CD or DVD. Plans for PhotoDirector 10 start at only $3.67/month, making it an affordable option for beginners and professional photographers alike.

Magix Photo Manager Deluxe

Magix Photo Manager Deluxe is another powerful image editor and photo manager. Its simple user interface makes it a good choice for photographers at any stage in their career. Magix is compatible with all convention photo and video formats including RAW photos and AVCHD videos, and it uses layers, meaning you can create complex designs easily. When you edit your photos, you won’t have to worry about losing the original version, because Magix automatically creates a copy when you begin editing.

Users are able to import images from a variety of online cloud services as well as scanners and cameras, so you can see all of your photos in one place, regardless of where you’ve stored them in the past. The app can also access camera metadata so you can know exactly what settings were used in capturing each photo – a wonderful tool if you need to recreate a particular look or effect. You can organize your photos and videos by tagging them with keywords, location, color labels, star ratings and faces. This photo manager offers basic photo editing capabilities like color correction, auto-enhancing and image sharpening, but experienced editors may require a more robust set of tools.

Create a customized slideshow with transition effects and background music, which you can then share directly to Youtube, or burn photos and slideshows to CDs or DVDs. The Selection Wizard will analyze your library of images and automatically sort out duplicates and low quality or blurry photos. Using a combination of up to eight images, you can create a panorama that will be automatically aligned and blended into one unified image. If you’re overwhelmed by all the different capabilities on offer, don’t worry: Magix has a library of tutorial videos online that will help you navigate its photo management software and make the most of your investment. Professional photographers who work with clients will appreciate how password protection enables only people with permission to view different files and folders.

ACDSee Photo Studio Professional 2019

ACDSee emphasizes security, whether through the ability to lock folders and individual files with password protection (ideal for sharing photo proofs with clients) or the ability to create and add a custom watermark to your photos. Purchase of this photo management software includes limited online storage, with extra available at an additional cost. ACDSee supports multiple file types including RAW and offers high-quality editing software, with tools like object removal and cosmetic adjustments available. Organize your photos by keyword, rating, date, color, location, or faces, or create and assign custom categories that make the most sense for you.

Photo Management Software for Mac

Apple Photos

If you’re a Mac user who hasn’t given Apple Photos a chance, it should definitely be your first stop in the search for the best photo management software for Mac. There is no simpler option that Apple Photos: it already comes installed on your computer and any other Apple devices, and the desktop version opens automatically when you connect your phone or tablet to your computer. Better yet, it’s completely free.

Photos will create slideshows of your Memories without your intervention based on location or time, which you can easily share with other Mac users, who will be able to access your shared folder directly through their Apple device. Scene and object recognition allows you to search your photos by objects, like beach, apple, or tree, or to combine search terms to find the exact photo you’re looking for. Through Live photos, this photo manager will suggest which videos to turn into loops, reverse or long exposure based on the app’s algorithms. Apple Photos also has standard photo editing capabilities and it is compatible with RAW photo files.

MacPaw Gemini 2

MacPaw Gemini 2 is a very specific photo management software that focuses on locating and comparing similar and duplicate photos in order to recover valuable space on your Mac. As a photographer, you probably sometimes find that you have tens or hundreds of photos of the exact same scene from slightly different angles. How many of these angles are you really going to use? Once your duplicates are all in one place, you can hand pick which files to delete and which to save, or rely on Gemini 2’s Smart Select, which will automatically choose and delete the files it thinks you don’t really need.

The program’s algorithms can determine which files are originals and which are copies so it knows which files to keep, and deletes the rest. The algorithm will also learn from observing your actions and behavior over time and amend its practices as a result. If you do allow Gemini 2 to take the reins and delete duplicates using Smart Select, you can always rescue accidental deletes from the trash – nothing will be deleted permanently unless you empty your deleted items folder. Although this photo manager is lacking in some of the more advanced photo editing and management capabilities, it is a useful preliminary step in your quest to organize your photos (and clear up hard drive space while you’re at it).

Photo Management Software for Windows 10

Corel PaintShop Pro 2019

If you want the best photo manager for Windows 10, Corel PaintShop Pro 2019 is definitely up there. This windows photo management software provides powerful photo editing with simple and advanced enhancements, as well as a range of organizational tools perfect for the busy photographer on the go. Take your pick from the Essential or Complete interfaces: Essential provides only basic editing tools, while Complete includes photo editing and organizing. Color manipulation, HDR images and object removal are just a few of the capabilities available through this app, which can be used on your Android tablet as well as your Windows desktop. The photo management software supports all of the main photo types, including RAW, JPEG, PSD, TIFF, GIF and PNG, so no matter what format you like to work in, Corel has you covered.

Sort your photos using keywords, ratings, dates, faces, and location – unlike some other photo management software, with this photo manager you are not able to sort photos by color. The app comes with free online storage, although there is no password protection available. Users will receive regular reminders to back up your files so in the event of an emergency all of your hard work and effort stays protected. Although you cannot create slideshows or burn images directly to a CD, Corel PaintShop does allow you to share photos directly to a variety of social media websites. The creative presets use artificial intelligence to anticipate your photo editing and management needs. This is a photo management software designed for photographers by photographers, making it a great option for Windows users.

Phototheca 2

Phototheca is a photo management software that combines a few of the features we’ve seen in other options all in one place. Not only does it automatically identify and collect duplicate images for you to review, it also populates smart albums automatically when you set specifications. You can organize your images by theme, location, event and more, and then share to Flickr, Google Photos, Facebook or Twitter, or email photos to a client directly through the app.

If you use multiple cameras in your business, Phototheca can organize your files based on the camera used to take the photos. Import photos and their metadata easily from your computer, cell phone, tablet, HD cards, external hard drive and more. Multiple RAW camera formats are supported, as well as a number of video formats. Unique additional actions are also available, like the ability to fix incorrect time stamps. The calendar view provides a visual representation of your photography over time, so you can find exactly what you’re searching for as well as visualize your progress and work over the years and months. Password protection is available and Phototheca is a free photo manager. Commercial use, unlimited photo library and more features are available when you upgrade to Phototheca Pro.

Fresh View

Fresh View is another windows photo management software that is completely free. It supports multiple media formats, including video, photo and audio all in one convenient location. Features include the ability to convert graphics from one type to another, print, and create HTML albums. There are currently 86 media file formats supported by Fresh View, with more being added regularly. Visually, the interface comes across as a bit outdated compared to some of the other photography management software on this list, and there is no online storage available, so you’ll need to connect to a separate cloud storage to save your files online.

Best Free Photo Management Software

Google Photos

Google Photos is a free photo management software included in the Google Suite, making it a good option for those familiar with Google products and services. This photo manager is compatible with both photos and videos, and it automatically uploads to a linked cloud storage. You get unlimited free storage for high-quality images with reduced file sizes, or 12 GBs of free storage if you choose to upload the full resolution images. Additional storage is available for a fee. Google Photos connects to Google Drive and allows you to provide a shareable link with customizable options, so you can have complete control over what changes and additions, if any, viewers are allowed to make. You can even order photo albums of the images you uploaded directly through the Google Photos app, making printing your images super simple and straightforward. Share albums with family, friends or clients through Facebook, Twitter, or email.

Mylio

Mylio is another free photo management software that also has a free mobile app for photographers who like to access and edit their work no matter where they are. You can upload photos from your device or an external hard drive, or you have the option of importing images directly from your Facebook account. Once you’ve uploaded your images, Mylio will automatically organize them into a variety of views, including the calendar view, which separates photos into the years, then months, in which they were taken. Since Mylio is not a cloud-based service, you can view all of your files on any of your devices regardless of whether you have internet access or not. Simple designate one of your devices as the Vault, and Mylio will keep your image library on that device up to date with full sized files.

This allows you to access everything on all of your devices without internet without taking up a huge amount of space, so you’ll free up your storage space without losing access to your photos. Facial recognition software will automatically separate photos based on people’s faces, and it will learn over time based on your actions within the photo management software. Photo editing capabilities include filters as well as more advanced sliders. For additional security, Mylio offers encrypting capabilities, and you can integrate with other cloud-based libraries for an added sense of security. This free photo management software allows users to connect 3 separate devices and maintain a library of 25,000 photos, while paid versions Mylio Premium and Mylio Max offer additional features.

Since more expensive photo manager software will likely provide editing, sharing and storing capabilities as well as photo organization, while free versions may only include some of these features, consider what options you actually need for your photography business when determining which photo management software you should invest in.

What Next?

Now that you’ve got your photos all organized using your chosen photo management software, you can focus your time on what’s really important, like taking more photos, improving your techniques and learning new skills. With all your photos organized you’ll be able to decide which photos to include in your online portfolio. By carefully curating your portfolio you can make sure you’re representing your best self and embracing and making use of your niche. Don’t have an online portfolio yet? Choose one with unique themes and typography to customize every last detail of your portfolio and really stand apart from the crowd.

Good luck with finding the perfect photo management software for your photography business. We can’t wait to see how it goes!

Do you want more awesome tips on editing your photos?
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Abstract

We propose an image-based face swapping algorithm, which can be used to replace the face in the reference image with the same facial shape and features as the input face. First, a face alignment is made based on a group of detected facial landmarks, so that the aligned input face and the reference face are consistent in size and posture. Secondly, an image warping algorithm based on triangulation is presented to adjust the reference face and its background according to the aligned input faces. In order to achieve more accurate face swapping, a face parsing algorithm is introduced to realize the accurate detection of the face-ROIs, and then the face-ROI in the reference image is replaced with the input face-ROI. Finally, a Poisson image editing algorithm is adopted to realize the boundary processing and color correction between the replacement region and the original background, and then the final face swapping result is obtained. In the experiments, we compare our method with other face swapping algorithms and make a qualitative and quantitative analysis to evaluate the reality and the fidelity of the replaced face. The analysis results show that our method has some advantages in the overall performance of swapping effect.

1. Introduction

Face synthesis refers to the image processing technology of the automatic fusion of two or more different faces into one face, which is widely used in fields of video synthesis, privacy protection, picture enhancement, and entertainment applications. For example, when we want to share some of the interesting things on social networks, we can use the face synthesis technique which can be regarded as a fusion of facial features and details to change our appearances appropriately without privacy leaks. As another type of face fusion, face swapping combines some parts of one person's face with other parts of the other's face to form a new face image. For instance, in the application of virtual hairstyle visualization, the client's facial area can be fused with the hair areas of the model images to form new photos, so that customers can virtually browse their own figures with different hairstyles. This paper focuses on the face swapping problem of virtual browsing applications for hairstyle and dressing. Our main contributions of the proposed algorithm include the following: (1) construct a pipeline of face swapping which integrates some learning-based modules into the traditional replacement-based approach, (2) improve the sense of reality and reliability of the synthesis face based on the precise detection of the facial landmarks, and (3) the face occlusion problem can be solved by introducing an accurate face parsing algorithm.

2. Related Work

Existing face swapping algorithms can be roughly divided into three categories: replacement-based, model-based, and learning-based. The replacement-based method usually replaces the face region in the reference image with the input face region and then applies some image processing techniques to enhance the real sense of the synthesized image. Bitouk et al. [1] built a face image set with different expressions, facial shapes, and postures, and the algorithm could automatically select the most similar reference face from the image set for face replacement. Although this method can reduce the influence of the differences in facial expression, face shape, and posture, the application of the algorithm is limited because users cannot choose the favorite reference face image independently. Mahajan et al. [2] established a mask image of facial features, and the mask-covered image was then attached to the reference image to achieve the face swapping. But the selected mask image, which can only cover the facial features, is unable to retain other facial characteristics, such as wrinkles, textures, skin colors, and muscle deformations. Besides, this method requests users to carry with the interactive instructions when running, which greatly reduces the practicability of the algorithm.

In the model-based approach [3], a two-dimensional or three-dimensional parametric feature model is established to represent human face, and the parameters and features are well-adjusted to the input image. Then the face reconstruction is performed on the reference image based on the result of adjusting the model parameters. An early work presented by Blanz and Volker et al. [4] used a 3D model to estimate the face shape and posture, which improved the shortcoming of the unsatisfied performance of the synthesis due to the illumination and the perspective. However, the algorithm requires a 3D input model and a manual initialization to get a better result, which undoubtedly has a stricter requirement for data acquisition. Wang et al. [5] proposed an algorithm based on active apparent model (AAM). By using the well trained AAM, the face swapping is realized in two steps: model fitting and component composite. But this method needs to specify the face-ROI manually and a certain number of face images for model training. Lin et al. [6] presented a method of constructing a 3D model based on the frontal face image to deal with the different perspectives of reference image and input image. But the reconstructed model does not reflect the characteristics of the original face precisely and takes too much time to compute.

In most of the learning-based models, the reference image is converted into a synthesized face image by training a generative neural network that contains the information of the input image. Korshunova et al. [7] proposed a model based on convolution neural network, which can change the reference face into the input face while maintaining the posture, expression, and illumination of the former one. Although this method [7] has some advantages in the sense of reality, it needs a lot of training data and a large amount of computation, and the trained network only works for one single person. In addition, gan (generative adversarial networks) technology can also be used to obtain the generation of face synthetic images [8]. This method replaces the latent space representation of the face and then reconstructs the entire face image with a region-separated gan model. However, this model needs to build a large face image dataset with pixel-level parsing labels while slightly degrading the quality of the synthetic picture.

Above all, the replacement-based approach is simple and fast but sensitive to the variation in posture and perspective. The model-based method can effectively solve the perspective problem; however, it usually needs to collect three-dimensional face data, and robustness is not something to be satisfied. The learning-based approach can produce quite real and natural synthetic face image, while usually requiring a large number of training data and having more restrictions on the input and reference faces. Based on the comprehensive consideration of the characteristics of the above three methods, a face swapping algorithm supported by the facial landmark alignment is proposed under the replacement-based framework.

In addition, other widely used algorithms have been applied in our methods to achieve better results, such as facial landmark detection [9, 10], facial region segmentation [11, 12], and face warping [13]. And we will detail how these algorithms are applied in the method section.

3. Method

The algorithm is composed of three steps: face alignment, warping and replacement. The accuracy and robustness of the algorithm are enhanced by introducing some learning-based modules like facial landmark detection and face parsing.

3.1. Pipeline of Face Swapping

Although face swapping seems uncomplicated and practicable, an elaborately designed algorithm flow still has an impact on the realization of the final result. The pipeline of the proposed algorithm starts with two channels that finally fuse into one, as shown in Figure 1. First, the input image is aligned with the reference image based on a facial landmark detection algorithm. Second, the reference image is warped to fit the aligned face of the input image. With an advanced face parsing algorithm, in the next step, the face-ROIs are extracted from the aligned input image and the warped reference image, respectively. Finally, some common steps of face replacement and color correction are introduced to generate the final composite face image. To summarize, the proposed algorithm will be demonstrated into three parts: face alignment, face warping, and face replacement.

3.2. Face Alignment

As the first step of face swapping, alignment refers to aligning the input face image and the reference face image in size and direction. For the purpose of detecting faces in pictures, we apply the relevant methods in paper [14] which proposes a novel multiple sparse representation framework for visual tracking to detect the faces in pictures. Apart from increasing the speed of the algorithm, the application of sparse coding and dictionary learning also enables these methods to learn more knowledge from relatively fewer sample data. Then we extract several stable key points from the images to mark the faces, referred to as facial landmark detection (FLD for short). In this paper, we employ a popular FLD algorithm [9, 15] based on an ensemble of regression trees to detect facial landmarks , as plotted in Figure 2(a). We use this method that relies on our implementation. Each landmark point is symmetric to another point with respect to the central axis of the face such as and ,, and . The points located at the central axis are symmetric to themselves such as and . To evaluate the rotation between the input and the reference face, the central axis of the input face should be extracted previously. According to the basic definition, the central axis can be evaluated based on an optimization procedure as where is the mapping of with respect to the line . Equation (1) indicates that the central axis should be the line which optimizes the symmetry of all the 68 detected facial landmarks. Consequently, the center of the face is defined as the middle point of the projections of all the 68 detected facial landmarks on the central axis . The average distance from all the detected landmarks to the center point is denoted by , which can be used as the metric of the size of the input face. Therefore, the average distance can be written aswhere . Similarly, the central axis and the size of the reference face are, respectively, denoted with and . Then face alignment can be implemented by rotating the input image with the angle and scaling it with the factor , where is the rotation angle from to , and is the ratio between and , as shown inAfter the face alignment, the original facial landmarks transfer to the new locations , and the aligned input image is denoted by . Figure 2(b) shows the input face and the reference face with different sizes and poses. Figure 2(c) displays the results of facial landmark detection and face alignment. It can be seen from the result that the aligned input face is very similar in size and direction to the reference face.

(a)

(b)

(c)

3.3. Face Warping

To preserve the shape of the swapped face, we warp the reference image to fit the aligned input face before face replacement. The warping is implemented based on the alignment of facial landmarks. We pick 18 out of the 68 facial landmarks and denote them with (see Figure 3(a)), which are considered to have a significant impact on facial shape. The landmarks of the reference face are denoted with . The new locations of most of the landmarks (except , and ) after the image warping should perfectly aligned to the input face, so we haveFigure 3(b) illustrates the original landmarks (red points) and their new locations (green points). To realize the image warping, the reference image is firstly decomposed into many triangle pieces based on the landmarks. The triangulation is required to minimize the change of the image background because we generally hope to preserve some parts in the background such as hair, body, and dress (that is why we do not move , and ). The final layout of triangulation is designed as shown in Figure 3(a). Then the image warping can be realized by applying the specific affine transformation to the corresponding triangle pieces.

(a)