Missing People Website

Forensic artwork for missing people

Image enhancement has various forms and uses. In the majority of cases enhanced images enable publicity of a case, thereby helping to find a missing person or establish a person's identity. If photographs require manipulation either computer software or manual drawing techniques are used.

Image enhancement

Images of an individual are often obscured, for example, by print, other individuals or objects in the photo. Image enhancement can often be used to remove these.

Figs 1 - 3: Examples show how hair, glasses and people can be added or removed to alter a photo or a person's appearance.

Fig 1:

Fig 2:

Fig 3:

Age Progression

Age progression is used to enhance a photograph of a long term missing person to show what they may look like many years later. Facial features can be aged, hair and weight can be added or removed and clothing can be updated.

Computerised child age progression

The Identification department of Missing People is one of the few organisations in the world with staff trained in child age progression. Child age progression is an important tool when trying to generate new publicity on an older case. To warrant a child age progression, the child must have been at least two years old at the time they went missing and must have been missing for a period of at least two years.

Age progression artists work with the last known photograph of the child and with reference photographs of the mother and father, as well as siblings. Computer software is used to manipulate and merge features to create an updated image of what the child may look like at an older age, taking into account the growth of the underlying bone structure and dentition. Different hairstyles and clothes are added to bring the image up to date. It is important to note that an age progression is not an exact image of what the person will look like, but more of a possible likeness that will hopefully spark recognition. Age progressions are always done with the permission of families and the police.

Figs 4 - 6: These examples show an original image of a child and the age progressed image.

Fig 4:

Fig 5:

Fig 6:

Adult age enhancement

In some cases the photographs of long term missing adults can be enhanced and used in publicity to try and gain new information on an older case. As the age changes in an adult are less structural and more environmental this may involve a certain amount of estimation concerning factors like hairstyle and weight. However an updated image may provide the link needed to establish new information on a case. Age enhancement has also been used to help police in 'cold case' murder enquiries. Ideally when producing an age enhancement, good quality reference photos of the missing individual and of family members are needed, but each case is assessed individually. Please contact the Missing People's Identification department for more information.

Figs 7 - 9: These examples show an original image of an adult and the age progressed image.

Fig 7:

Fig 8.

Fig 9.