Image processing contains heavy computations, so it has significant potential for speedup. In this project, we want to explore how to use hardware components (i.e. an FPGA) to speed up image processing. Specifically, we will use an FPGA to perform facial recognition. Facial recognition can be roughly divided into two steps, facial detection and facial identification. We will measure how much time it takes to perform these steps in both hardware and software and explore the tradeoffs between running image processing algorithms purely on software versus using a combination of software and hardware components.