Faces Help

Contents

1. About
2. Login
3. Browsing
    3.1 Sorting
4. Search
5. Detailed View
6. Album
    6.1 Album States
    6.2 Album Lists
    6.3 Add pictures to an Album
    6.4 View content of an Album
7. Export Pictures
8. Usage Statistics

1. About

FACES is a database of facial expressions in adults of different ages that is freely available for usage in scientific research. It contains 2,052 pictures of naturalistic facial expressions of 171 younger, middle-aged and older adults. For each person, two sets of images are available, depicting six different emotions.
To protect the personal rights of the people involved, the pictures contained in FACES are only available to researchers on a case-by-case basis (e.g. person-by-person and study-by-study). Unregistered users can view 72 example pictures of six different people to gain insight into the FACES application and some of its functions. The main difference is that not logged-in users will not be able to see any function regarding albums.
Full access to this online service is only possible after registration and log-in. To apply for an account, please complete the application form.

News
As FACES will be extended over time by the addition of further data and functions, there is a news section on the FACES homepage where all information concerning its development will be seen.
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2. Login

Please enter your user name and password to view the pictures contained in FACES and to use the whole set of functions (especially all album functions).
If you have forgotten your password, please contact the FACES Technical Agent (facesdatabase_at_mpib-berlin.mpg.de).
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3. Browsing

All pictures contained in FACES are listed on the browsing page. The user can browse through them, change the number of hits per page and the sorting order based on the five available attributes Age, Emotion, Gender, Person-ID and Picture Set. Changes in the display will be saved by the end of the session for each user.
It is possible to add a picture to a private album while browsing. For details see add pictures to an album.

3.1 Sorting

Per default, following multiple sorting will be used:
Emotion (will be sorted alphabetically: Anger, Disgust, Fear, Happiness, Neutrality and Sadness), Person-ID, Picture Set.
The change the sorting, the user can select the desirable sorting criteria in the drip down bixes and klick on "Sort" to use the new setteled multiple sorting. Further on, ascending and descending can be changes for each sorting criteria.
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4. Search

It is possible to search within the whole faces collection (default setting) or within a specific published album.
All searches are carried out on the basis of special attributes used to describe each picture (e.g. Emotion, Age). Please note that when several search components are selected, the following rule applies: search criteria within the same attribute will be combined using the Boolean operator "OR" (e.g., Emotion = Anger OR Emotion = Happiness), while different types of attributes will be connected by the Boolean operator "AND" (e.g., Age = Young AND Emotion = Happiness).
Adding a picture from the search results to a private album is possible. For details see add pictures to an album.

Person-ID
It is possible to search for a specific person via their ID. Only triple-digit numbers can be extended in this field. Please note that only IDs in the range 004-182 exist, but that not all numbers within this range are assigned to a person (there are only 171 people in the collection).

Picture Set
Each emotion was photographed twice of each person. Therefore, there are two Picture Sets labelled a and b. These are not intended as a quality criterion but rather for comparison purposes. Pictures were randomly assigned to set a or b.
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5. Detailed View

The View button below each picture has the same effect as clicking on the picture itself. It provides detailed information about the picture and an enlarged version in optimal resolution for use on the internet (labelled Web Resolution).
Moreover, it is possible to view the technical metadata of the picture in its original resolution and all pictures of the selected person.

When viewing the details of a picture, it is also possible to go to the details for the previous / next picture. This navigation is based on the last picture list, which the user started viewing the first picture’s details from.
Adding a picture from the detailed view to a private album is possible. For details see add pictures to an album.

Tab Attributes
All attributes of the selected picture are stored in this tab.

Tab Toggle between Sets
For each person every emotion was photographed twice. The difference between these two sets of pictures is labelled using the attribute Picture Set with values a and b. By clicking on the Toggle between Sets tab the same picture from the other picture set will be displayed for a detailed comparison.
This tab is only available in the detailed view during browsing. When viewing a picture of an album, this function is not available.
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6. Album

An album is a set of selected pictures within the FACES collection created by a user. The aim of an album is to give researchers the opportunity to create their own selection of pictures which can be used as a basis for further studies. Albums can be used as private selections (only visible to the user who created the album) or can be published to reference them within a publication (visible to all logged-in FACES users).
A user has to be logged-in to the system to use the album functions.

6.1 Album States

Private
First an album has to be created. This means the user has to enter a name for their album with their name as the author. Optionally, they may add further authors and a description about the album's content. Each author has to be affiliated to at least one organisation, so that a minimum background about the person is available.
Further more, the user can set the new album immediately as Selected Album. This selection will be valid until the user sets another of their private albums as the selected one or until they closes the session.
After its creation, the album is in the state "private". That means that it is only visible to the creator (the so called Owner), who can add and remove as many pictures as they like (see add pictures to an album). Further on, the owner has the option to edit the album's metadata or to delete the whole album when it is of no more use.

Published
Is the owner of an album satisfied with its content they can publish it to make the metadata and the pictures of the album visible for all FACES users (logged-in users). During publishing, the album will automatically be persistently identified. The album is now in the state "published" meaning it can not be edited or changed any more and is fully visible within FACES. Deletion of the album is no longer possible, because it could already be cited by someone.
A not logged-in user who follows a link to a published album within FACES will only see the metadata of the album but not the pictures. These are only visible after being logged-in.

Withdrawn
The way of deleting an already published album it to withdraw it. For this command a comment specifying the reason for withdrawal has to be entered. The album is now in the state "withdrawn". It is not visible any more in the FACES overview of the published albums but still retrieval for users who know the exact URL of the album. That still works because the persistent URL will stay valid. (It could happen that the album was cited by someone. The concept of the persistent URL is that the URL will work for ever. But the withdrawl comment demonstrates that the creator of the album is not content with the album any more.) Further on, the withdrawn album is still visible in the album list of the owner. back top

6.2 Album Lists

There are two lists of albums in FACES.

My Albums
Firstly, there is the My Albums list, which contains all albums created by the individual user (identified via the user account) independently of their state (private, published or withdrawn). This individual list can be sorted by the following criteria: album name, number of pictures, description, date last modified and state. Further on, an open text search within the list is available, which searches among the album names and descriptions.
It is possible to delete several private albums in the list in one step. To do this, the checkbox in front of the album name has to be selected and the user has to click on Delete selected Albums.

Published Albums
Secondly, there is the Published Albums list, which contains all albums published by FACES users. This list is therefore the same for all logged-in users.
This list can also be sorted by the following criteria: album name, number of pictures, description, date published, author and affiliation of the author. Further more, the open text search searches within the album names and descriptions.

Similar to browsing, changes in the number of hits per page or the sorting order of an album list will be saved by the end of the session for each user.
The user has to click on the name of the album to view the pictures in an album and their detailed metadata.
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6.3 Add pictures to an Album

Adding pictures to a private album (this is no longer possible for published or withdrawn albums) is a function that is offered nearly always when viewing pictures (such as browse, search results, detailed view of a picture). To do this, an album for adding the pictures to has to be selected in the colored footer on the page (the so called Selected Album). This footer is orange as long as no album is selected (the adding function is not available yet) and will change to blue as soon as an album is selected. It includes a list of all private albums so that the user can easily switch between them. However, it is only possible to select one album at a time.
When viewing a picture within an album, the picture can also be added to another album. Here, instead of the colored footer a small menu below the attributes is available. In this way the user can easily distinguish between browsing the FACES collection and viewing the pictures in an album.

Below each picture within FACES an Add button is displayed, which is linked to the Selected Album. This means, when using this button, the selected picture will be added to the Selected Album. If no album is selected, the Add button is disabled (gray). Further on, it is also possible to add all the pictures displayed on a page or to add all the pictures displayed on all the pages (of one picture list) to a selected album.
All pictures already added to the Selected Album will be displayed with a blue frame so that the user can easily see which pictures are already in the album. This means, when changing the Selected Album, the blue frames around the pictures will change too, based on the Selected Album.
It is not possible to add a picture more than once to an album.
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6.4 View content of an Album

To view the contents of an album (the pictures and the detailed metadata of the album), the user has to select the album in one of the album lists (My Albums or Published Albums). The currently selected album can also be viewed via the link in the colored footer.
For each album, all the available metadata are displayed. When some fields are missing, it is because they do not contain any input and are therefore left out.
The Author of the album is always the owner of the album. All further authors are labeled as Further Authors.
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7. Export Pictures

It is only possible to export albums (private and published ones) not pictures themselves. So, in order to export a picture, first an album has to be created which contains the relevant picture(s). This album can be exported then, which means that all pictures in this album will be exported.
During the export, the user can choose which formats of the pictures they want to export (Thumbnails, Web Resolution, Original Resolution), and whether they want to have the attributes exported in a separate csv file or whether to get all attributes and technical metadata of the pictures in a separate xml file.

Before exporting, the user has to submit to the FACES release agreement (a short version of the one attached to the application form for an user account). Thus, the awareness that the user is dealing with sensitive data is reassured.
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8. Usage Statistics

The FACES solution stores some anonymous usage statistics: the number of visits (number of different retrievals of the home page once per user session) for all users, the number of executed log-ins, the number of executed exports, and the number of exported pictures. These data will be evaluated per month and year.
These usage statistics are only visible to the administrator(s) of FACES.
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