Designed as an uncomplicated and straightforward app, Face Crop Jet automates face detection, framing, and cropping to produce passport size photographs of any number of images. You can load individual files or entire folders of photographs, use the default output size or customize it to fit your requirements, set out an output folder, and let the program do the work it was set out to do. The resulting ID photos will be saved as JPEG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, or GIF files.
The idea is excellent. However, after testing the program with all kinds of portraits and other not-so-obvious photographs, I have to admit that only very few of them weren’t rejected by the program. First of all, if more than one person appears in the photograph, the program will only pick up one of them, leaving all the other possible subjects unprocessed. Assuming then that the program has been designed to deal with one face at a time, I tried with unambiguous one-person portraits. The results were mixed, and puzzling. Clear-cut faces, looking straight to the lens were repeatedly ignored or rejected by the program, while other less clear portraits – such as semi-profiles – were efficiently dealt with. Easy-to-identify faces on a white background – a requisite in many countries for passport or ID photos – were blatantly ignored, while others on a dark background were successfully processed. The alignment of the detected face in the cropping box also produces irregular results – some are perfectly centered, while others are cut at one of the edges. It doesn’t matter how many times you repeat the process, the results are always the same, and the program’s lack of editing tools makes it impossible to correct any cropping errors.
The few images that weren’t rejected by the program appear briefly on the program’s interface before being stored in the selected folder. If you wish to see the results, you will need to browse to that folder and use a third-party image viewer to check if everything went as planned.
The program produces a log file with a list of all the image files that couldn’t be processed, but all it contains is a list of file names and paths. There is no way of knowing what went wrong or any other information that might help you select your photos more carefully to avoid further disappointment. This lack of information turns Face Crop Jet into a permanent trial-and-error experience.
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