I have a project just starting up that requires the kind of expertise I have none of (yet!). Basically, I want to be able to use the user's webcam to track the position of their index finger, and make a particular graphic follow their finger around, including scaling and rotating (side to side of course, not up and down).
As I said, this requires the kind of expertise I have very little of - my experience consists mostly of PHP and some Javascript. Obviously I'm not expecting anyone to solve this for me, but if anyone was able to direct me to a library or piece of software that could get me started, I'd appreciate it.
Cross compatibility is of course always preferred but not always possible.
Thanks a lot!
I suggest you to start reading about OpenCV
OpenCV (Open Source Computer Vision) is a library of programming functions mainly aimed at real-time computer vision, developed by Intel Russia research center in Nizhny Novgorod, and now supported by Willow Garage and Itseez.1 It is free for use under the open-source BSD license. The library is cross-platform. It focuses mainly on real-time image processing.
But first, as PHP and JavaScript are mainly used for web development, you should start reading about a programming language which is supported by OpenCV like C, C++, Java, Python or even C# (using EmguCV) etc.
Also, here are some nice tutorials to get you started with hand gestures recognition using OpenCV. Link
Good luck!