双语阅读：科技-Picasa 3: 识别面孔的照片共享程序

将数码照片贴到网上与亲友共享本来就很好玩。你终于可以向人家展示你拍摄的照片，他们已经等了好几个星期甚至几个月，浏览这些照片时还会想起许多难忘的趣事。但如果看照片时，里面的人能自动识别出来，这样可以很快找到自己想看到的人，那岂不是更有意思吗？
Posting digital photos online to share with friends and family is supposed to be fun. You finally get to show your shots off to the people who waited weeks or even months to see them, and glancing through the images can conjure up memorable anecdotes. But wouldn't it be even more enjoyable to look at pictures with the people in them identified so you can quickly find those shots with certain people you want to see?

人们很少给照片加标签，因为识别照片中的人并加上标注的过程只能手动进行，十分费劲。本周，我测试了谷歌(Google)免费照片组织和编辑软件的新版本Picasa 3(picasa.com)及其免费的在线分享组件Picasa Web Albums。这个网络组件利用人脸识别技术，试图让看照片的人省点力，不用去一一分辨照片中的每个人。它会自动将照片中的人脸分类，让你给它们命名，将来这些人脸每次出现时都可以自动识别，只需点一下鼠标就能给它们加上标签，无需费劲打字。
People rarely tag photos because identifying and labeling the people in them is an arduous, manual procedure. This week, I tested the new version of Google's free photo organizing and editing software, Picasa 3 (picasa.com) and an updated version of its free online-sharing component, Picasa Web Albums. The Web component tries to take some of the work out of identifying people in your shared photos using facial recognition. It automatically isolates faces in your pictures, invites you to identify them by name, and then recognizes these faces every time they pop up in future pictures so they can be tagged with one click and no typing.

Picasa 3是一款Windows桌面应用程序，包括许多新的或是经过改良的功能，如裁剪建议等更为智能化的编辑工具，还可以一步到位地共享电脑桌面上的相册。这款程序还能用静态的照片创建视频、编辑视频剪辑并上传到YouTube。个性化的照片拼贴可以轻松实现，还可以直接在图像上加上文本标签。
Picasa 3, the Windows desktop application, includes a handful of new or improved features, including smarter editing tools, like cropping suggestions, and a one-step process to share photos from desktop albums. It also has the ability to create movies from still photos; to edit video clips and to upload those movies to YouTube. Personalized photo collages are a snap to make, and pictures can be labeled with text right on the image.

不过我最喜欢的功能是Picasa Web Albums上给照片中的人脸加上姓名标签的功能。
But my favorite feature, the ability to name-tag faces in photos, is found in Picasa Web Albums.

照片从个人电脑上传到Picasa Web Albums后，用户启用姓名标签功能，人脸识别功能会找出所有包含人脸的照片，将它认为是同一个人的照片分到一起。用户必须为每张面孔创建姓名标签。一张面孔被加上标签后，程序就会准确地在后来的照片里识别出这张面孔，并给出建议的名称。你或其他浏览者都可以看到这些标签，只要选择共享照片时显示姓名标签就可以了。
When photos are uploaded from a personal computer to Picasa Web Albums and a user enables Name Tags, facial recognition finds all of the photos containing faces and then groups together the photos it thinks are of the same person. The user must create name labels to go with each face. Once a face is labeled, the program does a pretty good job of recognizing that face in subsequent photos and suggesting a name to go with it. These labels can be seen by you or others, if you enable visible name tags when sharing.

Picasa 3和Picasa Web Albums的另一个优点是，二者现在都给所有相册加上清楚的标签，显示哪些相册是公开的，哪些是不公开的，以及哪些设置成自动与这类相册的网络版保持同步。这两款程序都非常智能，只需鼠标一点就能实现彼此同步。Picasa Web Albums运行十分流畅，我常常会忘记它是一款网络程序而非桌面应用程序。但所有的照片编辑和润色都必须用桌面程序Picasa 3来完成。所以我很多时候完全沉浸在Picasa Web Albums之中，在里面寻找编辑工具，然后才想起我得回到Picasa 3来对照片进行润色。
Another plus in Picasa 3 and Picasa Web Albums is that both now clearly label all albums to show which are public or private, and which are set to automatically synchronize with the Web-based versions of these albums. And these two programs are smart enough to synchronize with one another using a single mouse-click. Picasa Web Albums worked so smoothly that I often forgot it was Web-based and not a desktop application. But all photo editing and retouching must be done on Picasa 3, the desktop program. This led to many moments when I became absorbed in Picasa Web Albums and looked there for editing tools before remembering I needed to return to Picasa 3 to touch up photos.

同样，姓名标签也只能在Picasa Web Albums上使用，因为照片必须经过上传和扫描，人脸识别才能发挥作用。有一次我使用Picasa时没有联网，我注意到一张照片中的人脸没有姓名标签，想给它加上，但不用Picasa Web Albums就无法做到。
Likewise, name tagging can only be done on Picasa Web Albums because photos must be uploaded and scanned for facial recognition to work. I found myself offline in the Picasa software, noticing a photo with a face that wasn't name tagged and wanting to label it, but not being able to do so without using Picasa Web Albums.

我最终习惯了在Picasa和Picasa Web Album之间换来换去，但对某些用户来说这种情况很麻烦。谷歌称正在研究如何将姓名标签功能融入Picasa 3桌面程序。至于开发与苹果电脑兼容的Picasa 3版本，谷歌表示还没有相关计划。不过，Picasa Web Album在苹果电脑上运行良好，包括人脸识别功能，Picasa还为苹果电脑用户提供了一个免费的上传工具，可以直接从苹果公司(Apple)的iPhoto软件向Picasa Web Albums发送照片。
I eventually got used to this back and forth between Picasa and Picasa Web Albums, but it could be a deterrent for some users. Google says it is looking into how to integrate name tags with its Picasa 3 desktop software. As for making a Mac-compatible version of Picasa 3, the company says it doesn't have any plans to report. However, the Web component, including face recognition, works fine on a Mac, and Picasa offers a free uploading utility for Macs that allows pictures to be sent to Picasa Web Albums directly from Apple's iPhoto software.

我惊讶地发现，自己对给照片加姓名标签的操作乐此不疲。这提供了一种根据每张照片中的人物来给照片分类的新方法，Picasa甚至还发现了一些我在照片中没注意到的人脸，让我对老照片有了新看法。当然，这个系统也并非完美。一些东西－－包括一根街灯柱－－被错误地识别为相册中的人脸，它甚至还要求给我拍摄的雷诺阿(Renoir)作品中的人脸加标签。
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the process of labeling photos with name tags. This provided a new way to sort images according to who was in each shot, and Picasa even found some hidden faces of friends I hadn't seen in photos, giving me a new perspective on an old picture. Of course, the system isn't perfect. A few things -- including a lamppost -- were falsely identified as faces in my photo albums, and it even requested name labels for the faces in photos I took of Renoir paintings.

将添加姓名标签的活完全交给Picasa是不可能的；你必须手动为每张人脸取个名字。但这个发现人脸的程序用得越多就会越智能，在每张照片下面呈现准确的姓名标签建议供你选择。有一个“人物”页面列出了所有在已上载照片中亮过相的人，我开始用这个作为便捷的参考工具。照片的姓名标签可以包括绰号、全名和电子邮件。如果某个人已经在你的Gmail联系人列表中，你键入姓名时就可以自动检索并输入这些信息。
There's no way to completely turn name-tagging over to Picasa; you must manually assign a name to each face. But this discovery process grows smarter the more it is used, returning accurate, selectable name-tag suggestions below each photograph. A People page lists all the people whose faces appeared in uploaded photos, and I started relying on this as a quick reference tool. A photo name tag can include a nickname, full name and email. If someone is already listed in your Gmail contacts, these data are automatically retrieved and entered as you begin typing a name.

Picasa桌面程序的每个相册顶端有一个“同步”(Sync)按钮，可以保证用户对桌面相册照片所做的任何改动或编辑操作都能自动在Picasa Web Albums中反映出来。我对这个功能进行了多次测试，已上传的照片很快就变得与桌面上的版本一致。
A Sync button at the top of each album in the Picasa desktop software assures users that any changes or edits made to photos in albums on the desktop will automatically be reflected in the Picasa Web Albums. I tested this many times, and uploaded photos changed quickly to match the desktop copy.

现在，用户无需先将照片从Picasa 3上传到Picasa Web Albums，然后再实现分享，他们可以点击Picasa 3里的一个“分享”(Share)按钮，只需一步就能上传照片并通过电子邮件发送出去。桌面程序和在线的Picasa Web Albums中的所有相册的隐私状况都有明确标示，这样你就知道自己的相册是私人的还是公开的。这些选项可以在“设置”(Settings)中进行调整，里面用明确的语言描述了分享状况。我喜欢Picasa 3中的实用编辑工具，其中有一个自动剪裁工具，每张照片可以产生三种剪裁建议预览。
Instead of uploading photos from Picasa 3 to Picasa Web Albums and then sharing them from there, users can now hit a Share button in Picasa 3 that uploads images and emails them in one neat step. Privacy status on all albums is clearly marked, both in the desktop software and online in Picasa Web Albums, so you know if your album is private or public. These options can be adjusted in Settings, where the language used to describe sharing conditions is very clear. I liked the useful editing tools in Picasa 3, including an automatic crop tool that generated three cropping suggestion previews per photo.

一个新的自动去除红眼工具产生了十分精确的效果；它比大多数红眼去除工具好用，因为它会识别红眼，我只要点一下鼠标就能修正了。Picasa深受喜爱的“补光”(Fill light)功能是一个可移动的刻度尺，可以对颜色过深、阴影太重而难以辨别的照片进行调节并提高亮度。我甚至还发现了自己以前没见过全貌的一些照片－－包括在巴黎圣母院(Notre Dame Cathedral)里面拍摄的照片和我最喜欢的一张跟朋友一起在日落时拍的照片。
A new automatic red-eye removal tool returned accurate results; it was easier to use than most because it identified red eye for me so I could fix it with one click. 'Fill light,' a standby in Picasa, is a movable scale that adjusted and brightened dark, shadowy photos that were originally hard to distinguish. I even found photos that I had not previously seen in their entirety -- including shots of the inside of Notre Dame Cathedral and a favorite photo of me with friends in front of a sunset.

除了上面提到的功能，Picasa 3还有一个快捷按钮，可以轻松地将照片上传到谷歌的博客(Blogger)服务，另外还有一个简单易行的地理标签功能(Geotagging)，可以标示照片的拍摄地点。这款软件还有一个漂亮的内置照片浏览器，可以浏览你电脑里的所有照片。Picasa Web Albums有一个移动组件名叫Explore，它是一种寻找世界各地的公开照片的新方法，让我想起了在Flickr上搜索的经历。
Along with these other features, Picasa 3 has a shortcut button for easy uploading to Google's Blogger service and one-step Geotagging, which adds location tags to photos. This software also includes a nice-looking built-in photo viewer for looking at all images on your PC. Picasa Web Albums has a mobile component and a new way of finding public photos from around the world, called Explore, which reminded me of searching on Flickr.

如果你想找一款在隐私问题上不会让用户犯糊涂、功能更为丰富的照片分享服务，Picasa 3和Picasa Web Albums值得一试。姓名标签会改变你对照片分类的方式，不过如果Picasa桌面程序和Picasa Web Albums都具备这个功能的话就更实用了。
If you're looking for a richer photo-sharing service that doesn't confuse users when it comes to privacy, Picasa 3 and Picasa Web Albums are well worth your time. And name-tagging will change the way you sort through photos, though it would be more useful if it was available in the Picasa desktop software, as well as on Picasa Web Albums.