anyone know any specific programs to do this kind of specific thing?

anyone know any specific programs to do this kind of specific thing?Interesting question. I have not heard of such a program.

Would the purpose/intent be to attempt to predict what potential offspring from a couple would look like?

hi,
first I am novice big time with photoshop but it seems in away that done here with photoshop, we merge various people and objects into one picture.. and with a baby picture well take elements of the parents pictures ie; eye, ears, mouth, etc and add them to the picture with alittle distortion or just like that one challenge where your merging faces into a rock!!

however.. besides that.. I think your talking about morphing type programs!!

where you start out with one picture and it transforms/morp's into another ..

there a lot of programs on the net too manyto mention , that does that, search for morphing or morphing into babyface ... you'll get a lot of hits...
here a site with a table of various comparisons of morphing programs
http://morphing-software-review.toptenreviews.com/
maybe even the one at broderbund may fit your needs.

in addition, I do know that your larger police departments and the FBI and a few other agencies have very sophisticated morphing programs (mega bucks) where they'll take a baby face , along with the parents and see what the potentially look like when they grow up or in reverse, take a adult and see what it looks like whenit was little...

anyone know any specific programs to do this kind of specific thing?

It's pretty easy. I've done it. I use Morpheus morphing sofware.

1.If the proposed child is a boy, then you find a photo of the father at, say 5 years old. (Until age five age progression is difficult as the more stable dimensions of the face aren't set until then.)

2. Find a photo of both the father and mother at the current time.

3. Morph the father into the mother, or the other way around and do a screen capture of the image at 50% of the way through. This creates a photo that isn't really male or female, but combines features from both parents.

4. Now take the image of the father at 5 and morph it into the photo of the merged parents. Use LOTs of frames. Use x number of frames for each year you want to advance his age. Now find the image located at 10 years (using the formula above) This gives you a unisex version of the child. You need to age him male to find out what he'd look like a little later as a male

5. Take that 10 year old morphed image and morph it into the father at current age. That will give you a rough impression of what the proposed child would look like as a man. You can stop at the image that represents 12 years old, or 15 or 20 or 30.

Do the reverse if the proposed child is a female. I have a fascination for this kind of work. You want to mix the "genes" from both parents, then age him forward using the sex-appropriate parent.

Amy