Patent ID: 8019128

Claim:
A face detection device for detecting a human face image in an image, the face detection device comprising: a face determining unit that performs a face determination process, in the face determination process the face determining unit determining whether the image includes a human face image indicative of at least a part of a human face; a control unit that performs a base process by controlling the face determining unit to perform the face determination process at least one time; a display unit that displays a result of the base process; a receiving unit configured to receive an instruction indicating that an additional process is instructed by a user; a pixel information creating unit that creates pixel information of each pixel in the image; an extracting unit that extracts a region including a pixel having human skin characteristics from the image based on the pixel information, wherein the face determining unit comprising: a setting unit that sets a block size; a dividing unit that divides a region extracted by the extracting unit into blocks having the block size, each block having at least one pixel; a block information forming unit that forms block information for each block based on the pixel information of at least one pixel in the each block; and an information determining unit that determines whether a changing state, indicative of how the block information changes according to shift in position of the block in one direction in the region, satisfies a prescribed condition; and a determining unit that determines that the region includes a human face image when the information determining unit determines that the changing state satisfies the prescribed condition, wherein when the receiving unit receives the instruction, the control unit performs the additional process by controlling the face determining unit to perform the face determination process at least one time on the same image with a higher accuracy than the face determination process in the base process.