Who Wears What? A smarter tartan tool

[TerryPea]

I've been helping many guests at our clan tent in finding their roots and providing them with family history and an image of their clan's tartan.

I have also been totally amazed at what the smartphones can do to identify groceries, occupants of a cemetery, human irises, and fingerprints. I am just wondering why I have not seen a phone/tablet app that allows someone to photograph a plaid, and have it display who/what is represented by the pattern. I have pictures of about 2,000 tartans/plaids, and some of them are so similar, it really is difficult distinguishing the differences.

Has anyone seen such an app? I'm willing to pay for this, but won't turn down a freebie, being the Scot I am.

TIA,
Terry Pea
Pacific Director, Clan Crawford

[Steve Ashton]

Could you expand on what you mean by "who/what is represented by the pattern".

Do you mean what Clan, family, region, company,etc. each Tartan is accepted to represent. Or do you mean what the colors or elements of a Tartan pattern are supposed to mean?

The two best resources for Tartans are The Scottish Tartans Authority (www.tartansauthority.com) and The Scottish Register of Tartan (www.tartanregister.gov.uk).

Here you may search Tartans by name, color, registration number, and alphabetically. Both are accessed with any computer or web capable phone or tablet.

There is a common misconception that the individual elements or colors used in a Tartan represent 'valor', 'blood spilled', or some other attribute. This is not necessarily so. While the colors were chosen by the designer, and they had some reason for choosing them, a universal code should not be implied. A quick search though either of the site above will prove this out.

[Calgacus]

I think the OP is wondering if there is an 'automatic tartan recognition' app, whereby one would simply have to take a photo of a piece of tartan and the app would recognise it and provide appropriate information about the tartan and associated clan, if any.

It would be terrific if it existed, but I suspect it doesn't (yet).

[Leatherneck Donald]

My wife has an app that "listens" to a few seconds of a song on the radio or a tv show and then automatically searches to find the artist and where to buy it. With Google images, you can put in a photo and Google finds matching or similar photos.

It does seem like you could take a photo of a tartan and then an app would search the STA and SRT for a match so you would then know what tartan it is, what mill makes it, where to get a kilt made in it, and then what family names are associated with it. Maybe even different, related tartans or other patterns... ancient, hunting, etc... or Leatherneck, Dress Blue, desert MARPAT

[OC Richard]

Yes it would be great! You could hold your smartphone up to somebody's kilt (they might wonder what you're up to) and the app would link you to the STA page(s) which is/are the best match.

It's like the tune recognition app: you hold your phone up to music playing, and the app tells you the name of the piece, composer (if known), and provides sheet music if you wish. It's quite amazing. TunePal??

[Calgacus]

TunePal??

SoundHound, at least that's the Android version.

[California Highlander]

No Tartan ID app....yet! But there is a Tartan app for iPhone from XMarks advertiser Houston Kiltmakers.

My Tartan: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/my-t...471273016?mt=8
XMarks Reviews: http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...tan-app-84937/

A tartan finder that works similarly to SoundHound would be cool. Any kilt-weary app developers on XMarks?

[Father Bill]

I'd love such an app, but I fear that the market for it is too limited to attract a lot of programmers... except perhaps for our own "XMarks Geeks-Extraordinaire" who might wish to do so.

As experienced in our current attempt to define THCD, the experience, skills, and abilities of the Great Rabble are astounding!

[kiltedrennie]

Sounds like a fun app to write. I can think of a dozen challenges just off the top of my head. Like the music applications, it's a pattern recognition problem. Unlike music, you're dealing with three dimensions. The rectangular pattern of the image would have to be rotated and de-skewed. The color normalized (not sure how this could be accomplished without a reference color chart in the image). Then apply an edge detection pattern optimized for rectangular patterns. I'm not sure what else, I'm not up to speed on image recognition algorithms.

Still, if it only narrowed down the search it would be helpful. Maybe just fingerprint each tartan by color proportion to start?

Hmmmmmm....

[Riverkilt]

Well, it sort of already exists here on X Marks....just post a pic of the tartan and ask the rabble - the answer soon emerges. Not an app...but it works.