Abstract: This paper proposes an algorithm of face recognition based on LBP operator and EMD.It uses a simple and efficient image preprocessing to limit the illumination variation.And then the LBP histogram of the image is obtained by extracting the local LBP feature.The EMD can accurately calculate the distance of the histogram, and thus the use of EMD can examine of image similarity by calculating the LBP histogram.In GTAV face database, the experimental results show that the algorithm is more robust to illumination changes and noise, and the EMD has a higher recognition rate than the χ2 measure.