An Active Appearance Model, AAM, uses an L1 minimization-based approach to aligning an input test image. In each iterative application of its statistical model fitting function, a shape parameter coefficient p and an appearance parameter coefficient λ within the statistical model fitting function are updated by L1 minimization. The AAM further includes a canonical classifier to determine if an aligned image is a true example of the class of object being sought before the AAM is permitted to output its aligned image.