1. A computer implemented method of associating a first face image with a second face image, the method comprising: applying a plurality of feature extractors via a computer to a first face image by use of a spatial mask and filter, wherein the spatial mask comprises a window and is configured to expose only a selected portion of the first face image; applying a plurality of feature extractors via the computer to a second face image by use of a spatial mask and filter, wherein the spatial mask comprises a window and is configured to expose only a selected portion of the second face image; computing via the computer a covariance based similarity measure of the first image and the second face image from extracted features; providing and storing on a computer readable storage device, a similarity measurement of the first face image and the second face image; applying a plurality of masks to the extracted features to produce a plurality of first image response masks and second image response masks; applying a plurality of Gabor filters to each of the first image and second image; applying a mask to each of the first image Gabor filter responses and second image Gabor filter responses; and adding similarity measures for the first image masks and second image masks; wherein the plurality of masks is one or more of a left eye mask, a right eye mask, a left mouth mask, and a right mouth mask; wherein the left eye mask and the right eye mask include only an eye, an eye lid, and an eye brow; wherein the left mouth mask includes only a left half of a mouth and the right mouth mask includes only a right half of the mouth; and wherein similarity measures related to the left eye mask and the right eye mask are weighted higher than similarity measures related to the left mouth mask and the right mouth mask.