15 People Who Prove There's Nothing Easy About Facial Progression

When a child goes missing, it can take years to find them. This presents a problem for law enforcement and search teams because a child's face can change a lot in a fairly short period of time. In the past, searchers had to rely on an artist's best guess as to what they would look like as teens. If the artist is way off, that severely limits the child's chances of ever being found.

So to meet the need for more accurate imaging, scientists have developed facial progression software to get a more detailed idea of how a face can change over the years. Unfortunately, this too has some frustrating challenges. For one, it's incredibly difficult to get an accurate image out a single childhood picture, where the photo's lighting or the child's facial expression can make a world of difference.

So before the software can even age the child, they first have to correct turned heads, facial tilt, and inconsistent lighting. While facial progression software gets a child's older facial characteristics closer than ever before, it's no surprise that there's still some discrepancy between the age-progressed image and the actual face. 

Some redditors have taken an interest in this challenge and have decided to try their own age-progressed images using Photoshop and user-submitted images. Each image takes a long time and the subreddit is still very young, so results are quite scarce. Still, it's interesting to compare the state-of-the-art images to an everyday citizen's attempt and see how they match up.

So we bring you these 15 images that show just how difficult age progression really is.

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1. How does age progression software actually work?

Once it has a usable image, the software combs through thousands of random photos of faces and determines a general trend of face changes as people age. From there, it applies the trend to the original image and alters it with these changes in mind.

2. Once the image is finished, it actually looks like it could be a real face.

The results usually bear a passing resemblance to the real face, which may be enough to identify the missing child.

3. Unfortunately, the results can also seem a little doll-like.

The images often walk a fine line towards the uncanny valley phenomenon where they look human enough to seem close, but not quite human enough to make us comfortable.

4. Plus, it gets harder to make an accurate image the younger the child appears in the photo.

While the previous two photos seem reasonably close to the person they're depicting, this one seems off the mark because they only had baby pictures to work with.

5. Sometimes the image can seem more angular than the face actually is.

Add that to a change in hair color and the difficulty increases when trying to identify a missing person.

Still, comparing these images to the attempts from reddit shows just how sophisticated this software is already getting.

6. These results are impressive, but you can see the difference.

The original poster noted that the photoshop shows more of her Filipino heritage than her adult face does.

7. Here, the age-progressed image seems like it could be a real face.

Some features even match this person's actual face, but the shape difference seems to throw the whole image out of whack.

8. This redditor's work sort of matches the doll-like quality you see in the software's images.

It also seems to get the nose right, but that's about it.

9. Unlike the other images, the age progression is on the left in this picture.

The original poster was very impressed with the attempt, but once again it seems you have to get the face shape right or it looks like a totally different person.

10. Since this challenge is so young, not every poster has shown their actual face yet.

This image also shows some impressive talent, but apparently it doesn't really look like the guy.

11. The neck seems a little longer than I'd expect.

Otherwise, it's a pretty good attempt, considering that we don't know if it looks anything like her.

12. Of course, some age progression images are better than others.

There's no word on whether this looks like her, but it seems doubtful.

13. One redditor was more inclined to do things the old-fashioned way.

The drawing seems plausible and is very well done, but we haven't heard back from the original poster on the likeness.

14. We actually did hear back from this gorilla's pal.

He said it didn't really look like him, but was impressed by the drawing.

15. Apparently this drawing doesn't resemble this person's adult self at all.

So he included a photo of his parents as a reference.

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