Patent ID: 8824747

Claim:
A method performed by an image processor, the method comprising: receiving a first digital image frame from among a series of digital image frames, the first digital image frame comprising pixels, each pixel having a corresponding hue value; determining a distance value between each of the first digital image frame's hue values and a specified hue value corresponding to skin-tone orange; generating a first orange-distance filtered frame based, at least in part, on the determined distance values; and deciding whether the first digital image frame includes a depiction of human skin based, at least in part, on: determining that the first orange-distance filtered frame comprises a first skin-tone orange portion, wherein the first skin-tone orange portion comprises distance values that are less than a threshold distance value; accessing shape classifiers generated for detecting shapes corresponding to faces within skin-tone orange portions of orange-distance filtered images, wherein the shape classifiers are generated by: retrieving, from a shape library, images of shapes and shape combinations corresponding to a face depicted in a given color space, wherein the shapes corresponding to the face include at least an eye, a nose, and a mouth, and wherein the shape combinations corresponding to the face include at least eyes, eyes and a nose, and a nose and a mouth; producing orange-distance filtered versions of the retrieved images of shapes and shape combinations; and assembling the orange-distance filtered images of shapes and shape combinations into the generated shape classifiers; and detecting a face within the first skin-tone orange portion of the first orange-distance filtered frame by using the accessed shape classifiers.