Face detection tutorial

Create the service object

To access Google APIs using the official client SDKs, you create a service object based on the API's discovery document, which describes the API to the SDK. You'll need to fetch it from the Vision API's discovery service, using your credentials:

Java

import com.google.api.client.googleapis.javanet.GoogleNetHttpTransport;
import com.google.api.client.json.JsonFactory;
import com.google.api.client.json.gson.GsonFactory;
import com.google.api.services.vision.v1.Vision;
import com.google.api.services.vision.v1.VisionScopes;
import com.google.api.services.vision.v1.model.AnnotateImageRequest;
import com.google.api.services.vision.v1.model.AnnotateImageResponse;
import com.google.api.services.vision.v1.model.BatchAnnotateImagesRequest;
import com.google.api.services.vision.v1.model.BatchAnnotateImagesResponse;
import com.google.api.services.vision.v1.model.FaceAnnotation;
import com.google.api.services.vision.v1.model.Feature;
import com.google.api.services.vision.v1.model.Image;
import com.google.api.services.vision.v1.model.Vertex;
import com.google.auth.http.HttpCredentialsAdapter;
import com.google.auth.oauth2.GoogleCredentials;
import com.google.common.collect.ImmutableList;
import java.awt.BasicStroke;
import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.Graphics2D;
import java.awt.Polygon;
import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Path;
import java.nio.file.Paths;
import java.security.GeneralSecurityException;
import java.util.List;
import javax.imageio.ImageIO;

/** Connects to the Vision API using Application Default Credentials. */
public static Vision getVisionService() throws IOException, GeneralSecurityException {
  GoogleCredentials credential =
      GoogleCredentials.getApplicationDefault().createScoped(VisionScopes.all());
  JsonFactory jsonFactory = GsonFactory.getDefaultInstance();
  return new Vision.Builder(
          GoogleNetHttpTransport.newTrustedTransport(),
          jsonFactory,
          new HttpCredentialsAdapter(credential))
      .setApplicationName(APPLICATION_NAME)
      .build();
}

Node.js

// By default, the client will authenticate using the service account file
// specified by the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable and use
// the project specified by the GCLOUD_PROJECT environment variable. See
// https://googlecloudplatform.github.io/gcloud-node/#/docs/google-cloud/latest/guides/authentication
const vision = require('@google-cloud/vision');

// Creates a client
const client = new vision.ImageAnnotatorClient();

const fs = require('fs');

Python

from google.cloud import vision
from PIL import Image, ImageDraw

client = vision.ImageAnnotatorClient()

Send a face detection request

To construct a request to the Vision API, first consult the API documentation. In this case, you'll be asking the images resource to annotate your image. A request to this API takes the form of an object with a requests list. Each item in this list contains two bits of information:

The base64-encoded image data
A list of features you'd like annotated about that image.

For this example, you'll simply request FACE_DETECTION annotation on one image, and return the relevant portion of the response:

Java

/** Gets up to {@code maxResults} faces for an image stored at {@code path}. */
public List<FaceAnnotation> detectFaces(Path path, int maxResults) throws IOException {
  byte[] data = Files.readAllBytes(path);

  AnnotateImageRequest request =
      new AnnotateImageRequest()
          .setImage(new Image().encodeContent(data))
          .setFeatures(
              ImmutableList.of(
                  new Feature().setType("FACE_DETECTION").setMaxResults(maxResults)));
  Vision.Images.Annotate annotate =
      vision
          .images()
          .annotate(new BatchAnnotateImagesRequest().setRequests(ImmutableList.of(request)));
  // Due to a bug: requests to Vision API containing large images fail when GZipped.
  annotate.setDisableGZipContent(true);

  BatchAnnotateImagesResponse batchResponse = annotate.execute();
  assert batchResponse.getResponses().size() == 1;
  AnnotateImageResponse response = batchResponse.getResponses().get(0);
  if (response.getFaceAnnotations() == null) {
    throw new IOException(
        response.getError() != null
            ? response.getError().getMessage()
            : "Unknown error getting image annotations");
  }
  return response.getFaceAnnotations();
}

Node.js

async function detectFaces(inputFile) {
  // Make a call to the Vision API to detect the faces
  const request = {image: {source: {filename: inputFile}}};
  const results = await client.faceDetection(request);
  const faces = results[0].faceAnnotations;
  const numFaces = faces.length;
  console.log(`Found ${numFaces} face${numFaces === 1 ? '' : 's'}.`);
  return faces;
}

Python

def detect_face(face_file, max_results=4):
    """Uses the Vision API to detect faces in the given file.

    Args:
        face_file: A file-like object containing an image with faces.

    Returns:
        An array of Face objects with information about the picture.
    """
    client = vision.ImageAnnotatorClient()

    content = face_file.read()
    image = vision.Image(content=content)

    return client.face_detection(image=image, max_results=max_results).face_annotations

Process the response

Congratulations - you've detected the faces in your image! The response to our face annotation request includes a bunch of metadata about the detected faces, which include coordinates of a polygon encompassing the face. At this point, though, this is only a list of numbers. Let's use them to confirm that you have, in fact, found the faces in your image. We'll draw polygons onto a copy of the image, using the coordinates returned by the Vision API:

Java

/** Reads image {@code inputPath} and writes {@code outputPath} with {@code faces} outlined. */
private static void writeWithFaces(Path inputPath, Path outputPath, List<FaceAnnotation> faces)
    throws IOException {
  BufferedImage img = ImageIO.read(inputPath.toFile());
  annotateWithFaces(img, faces);
  ImageIO.write(img, "jpg", outputPath.toFile());
}

/** Annotates an image {@code img} with a polygon around each face in {@code faces}. */
public static void annotateWithFaces(BufferedImage img, List<FaceAnnotation> faces) {
  for (FaceAnnotation face : faces) {
    annotateWithFace(img, face);
  }
}

/** Annotates an image {@code img} with a polygon defined by {@code face}. */
private static void annotateWithFace(BufferedImage img, FaceAnnotation face) {
  Graphics2D gfx = img.createGraphics();
  Polygon poly = new Polygon();
  for (Vertex vertex : face.getFdBoundingPoly().getVertices()) {
    poly.addPoint(vertex.getX(), vertex.getY());
  }
  gfx.setStroke(new BasicStroke(5));
  gfx.setColor(new Color(0x00ff00));
  gfx.draw(poly);
}

Node.js

We use the node-canvas library to draw onto images.

async function highlightFaces(inputFile, faces, outputFile, PImage) {
  // Open the original image
  const stream = fs.createReadStream(inputFile);
  let promise;
  if (inputFile.match(/\.jpg$/)) {
    promise = PImage.decodeJPEGFromStream(stream);
  } else if (inputFile.match(/\.png$/)) {
    promise = PImage.decodePNGFromStream(stream);
  } else {
    throw new Error(`Unknown filename extension ${inputFile}`);
  }
  const img = await promise;
  const context = img.getContext('2d');
  context.drawImage(img, 0, 0, img.width, img.height, 0, 0);

  // Now draw boxes around all the faces
  context.strokeStyle = 'rgba(0,255,0,0.8)';
  context.lineWidth = '5';

  faces.forEach(face => {
    context.beginPath();
    let origX = 0;
    let origY = 0;
    face.boundingPoly.vertices.forEach((bounds, i) => {
      if (i === 0) {
        origX = bounds.x;
        origY = bounds.y;
        context.moveTo(bounds.x, bounds.y);
      } else {
        context.lineTo(bounds.x, bounds.y);
      }
    });
    context.lineTo(origX, origY);
    context.stroke();
  });

  // Write the result to a file
  console.log(`Writing to file ${outputFile}`);
  const writeStream = fs.createWriteStream(outputFile);
  await PImage.encodePNGToStream(img, writeStream);
}

Python

def highlight_faces(image, faces, output_filename):
    """Draws a polygon around the faces, then saves to output_filename.

    Args:
      image: a file containing the image with the faces.
      faces: a list of faces found in the file. This should be in the format
          returned by the Vision API.
      output_filename: the name of the image file to be created, where the
          faces have polygons drawn around them.
    """
    im = Image.open(image)
    draw = ImageDraw.Draw(im)
    # Sepecify the font-family and the font-size
    for face in faces:
        box = [(vertex.x, vertex.y) for vertex in face.bounding_poly.vertices]
        draw.line(box + [box[0]], width=5, fill="#00ff00")
        # Place the confidence value/score of the detected faces above the
        # detection box in the output image
        draw.text(
            (
                (face.bounding_poly.vertices)[0].x,
                (face.bounding_poly.vertices)[0].y - 30,
            ),
            str(format(face.detection_confidence, ".3f")) + "%",
            fill="#FF0000",
        )
    im.save(output_filename)

Put it all together

Java

/** Annotates an image using the Vision API. */
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException, GeneralSecurityException {
  if (args.length != 2) {
    System.err.println("Usage:");
    System.err.printf(
        "\tjava %s inputImagePath outputImagePath\n", FaceDetectApp.class.getCanonicalName());
    System.exit(1);
  }
  Path inputPath = Paths.get(args[0]);
  Path outputPath = Paths.get(args[1]);
  if (!outputPath.toString().toLowerCase().endsWith(".jpg")) {
    System.err.println("outputImagePath must have the file extension 'jpg'.");
    System.exit(1);
  }

  FaceDetectApp app = new FaceDetectApp(getVisionService());
  List<FaceAnnotation> faces = app.detectFaces(inputPath, MAX_RESULTS);
  System.out.printf("Found %d face%s\n", faces.size(), faces.size() == 1 ? "" : "s");
  System.out.printf("Writing to file %s\n", outputPath);
  app.writeWithFaces(inputPath, outputPath, faces);
}

...

To build and run the sample, run the following commands from the sample code directory:

mvn clean compile assembly:single
java -cp target/vision-face-detection-1.0-SNAPSHOT-jar-with-dependencies.jar \
    com.google.cloud.vision.samples.facedetect.FaceDetectApp \
    data/face.jpg \
    output.jpg

Node.js

async function main(inputFile, outputFile) {
  const PImage = require('pureimage');
  outputFile = outputFile || 'out.png';
  const faces = await detectFaces(inputFile);
  console.log('Highlighting...');
  await highlightFaces(inputFile, faces, outputFile, PImage);
  console.log('Finished!');
}

To run the sample, run the following command from the sample code directory:

node faceDetection resources/face.png

Python

def main(input_filename, output_filename, max_results):
    with open(input_filename, "rb") as image:
        faces = detect_face(image, max_results)
        print("Found {} face{}".format(len(faces), "" if len(faces) == 1 else "s"))

        print(f"Writing to file {output_filename}")
        # Reset the file pointer, so we can read the file again
        image.seek(0)
        highlight_faces(image, faces, output_filename)

Face detection tutorial Stay organized with collections Save and categorize content based on your preferences.

Create the service object

Java

Node.js

Python

Send a face detection request

Java

Node.js

Python

Process the response

Java

Node.js

Python

Put it all together

Java

Node.js

Python

Face detection tutorial