A facial image identifying apparatus checks a facial image of a user captured by an image capturing unit such as a camera or the like against facial images of registered users for thereby identifying the user. When the facial image identifying apparatus starts to detect a facial image of an examinee user, it determines whether a situation of the image captured by the image capturing unit is appropriate to detect the facial image. If the situation is judged as being inappropriate, then information representing that the situation is inappropriate is presented to the examinee user. Based on the presented information, the examinee user can make an action to improve the situation of the captured image.