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Imagine you are a witness to a crime: you saw a young man running from a bank; it all happened very quickly, but you were able to have a good look at his face as he removed his balaclava. Would you be able to describe his face? There might not be useful CCTV footage from the bank, because of the mask, so would you also be able to make a recognisable image of his face? Research suggests not. However, a 10 year programme of research at the Universities of Stirling and Central Lancashire is changing this. There are currently two main systems that the police use to construct ‘facial composites ’ of criminal suspects. (Later, we will mention a third kind of system, under development.) First, there are forensic artists. These people have skills in portraiture and use pencils or crayons to draw the face by hand. Secondly, there are software systems. The UK has two, E-FIT and PRO-fit, and each contains a selection of ready made parts to build a face. For both artists and these software systems witness select individual facial features – a hairstyle, face shape, eyes, brows, nose, etc. The result is a composite of facial parts. See Figure 1 for examples. Considerable attention to detail is needed to evaluate the efficacy of a composit