Soon after launch we quickly added face detection to all images on upload. It was done to help prevent your photography from being badly composed in Hail publications. When a face is auto-detected the photo can be offset to ensure people's heads are nicely centred within any cropped designs.¹

But what if a face isn't detected? This can happen because you upload a portrait:

• with part of the face obscured or side-on
  
• the lighting may be too dark or contrasting
• the person may have an extreme expression

Also, face detection won't help for photos of animals, objects or landscapes, all of which could be as purposefully composed as a portrait. One of the first guidelines that budding photographers learn is the rule of thirds, which Wikipedia describes like this:

The guideline proposes that an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally spaced horizontal lines and two equally spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections. Proponents of the technique claim that aligning a subject with these points creates more tension, energy and interest in the composition than simply centering the subject would.

Simply put, generally photography is more interesting when it's composed with the focal point(s) offset from the centre of the frame and aligned along imaginary horizontal and vertical thirds. See the photo gallery below for some excellent examples of this by Nathan O'Nions.

At Hail, we know the added impact that great photography can bring to your content. However, up to now all photos that didn't have a face detected have been centred in outputs such as the Magazine. So for example, if you used a carefully composed landscape with a majestic albatross soaring across the sky in the top-right third of the frame, that focal point could have been cropped out of the design. That's why we decided to expand upon the face detection feature and open up the control of a photos' focal point within the Hail backend.

Take control of the focal point in 4 easy steps

• simply select an image to open up its window
• click on the edit icon next to the Focal point/ face detection section of the metadata
  
• click on the image to position the centre of your chosen focal point
• click on the '✓' to save

This feature is available in Hail today — sign in to check it out and as always be sure to let us know what you think.

¹ The metadata is also available in the content API which Logan Park High School is making great use of on their website as well as their magazines.