Hair segmentation

1. A method for detecting scalp or facial hair of a human subject depicted in a digital image and implemented at least in part by a computer system, the method comprising the steps of:

obtaining a digital image from a digital image-record collection;

linking the digital image to a variable amount of image metadata including semantic information relating to the content of the image and structural information relating to conditions under which the image was captured;

identifying (a) gender information indicating a gender of the human subject, (b) age information indicating an age or approximate age of the human subject, or (c) hair characteristic information indicating a set of hair characteristics associated with the human subject;

identifying an expected-hair region within the digital image based at least upon the identified information, the expected-hair region inclusive of at least a portion of a head to the human subject;

identifying a hair region within the expected hair region; and

using the information pertaining to the identified hair region with at least one of a computer software program and a computer-accessible memory to provide various functional outputs relative to the digital image.

2. The method for detecting scalp or facial hair of a human subject depicted in a digital image as recited in claim 1 further including the step of segmenting at least one of scalp and facial hair of a human subject depicted in the digital image, wherein the metadata indicating a possible distribution of at least one of scalp hair and facial hair of the subject comprises:

at least one of:

(i) gender information indicating a gender of the human subject,

(ii) age information indicating an age or approximate age of the human subject, and

(iii) hair characteristic information representative of the at least one of the scalp hair and the facial hair of the subject.

3. The method for detecting scalp or facial hair of a human subject depicted in a digital image as recited in claim 1 further including the step of extracting from the metadata an identification of the human subject and indicating a possible distribution of at least one of scalp and facial hair based on the identification of the human subject.

4. The method for detecting scalp or facial hair of a human subject depicted in a digital image as recited in claim 1 further including the steps of segmenting at least one of scalp and facial hair of a human subject depicted in the digital image and extracting semantic data from the image by image analysis wherein the metadata indicating a possible distribution of at least one of scalp and facial hair of the subject.

5. The method for detecting scalp or facial hair of a human subject depicted in a digital image as recited in claim 4 further including the step of determining from the semantic data an indication of a possible distribution of at least one of scalp and facial hair of the subject according to at least one of:

(i) gender information indicating a gender of the human subject,

(ii) age information indicating an age or approximate age of the human subject, and

(iii) hair characteristic information indicating a set of hair characteristics associated with the human subject.

6. The method for detecting scalp or facial hair of a human subject depicted in a digital image as recited in claim 5 further including the step of determining from the hair characteristic information a set of hair characteristics associated with the human subject according to at least one of:

the semantic data indicating a possible distribution of at least one of scalp and facial hair of the subject comprises:

at least one of:

hue, texture, luminance, chromaticity, location and shape characteristics of at least one region of the image.