Locating exact position of facial components is a key preprocessing for realizing highly accurate and reliable face recognition schemes. In this paper, we propose a simple but powerful method for detecting isolated facial components such as eyebrows, eyes, and a mouth, which are horizontally oriented and have relatively dark gray levels. The method is based on the shape-resolving locally optimum thresholding that may guarantee isolated detection of each component. We show that pure facial regions can be determined by grouping facial features satisfying simple geometric constraints on unique facial structure. In the test for over 1000 images in the AR -face database, pure facial regions were detected correctly for each face image without wearing glasses. Very few errors occurred in the face images wearing glasses with a thick frame because of the occluded eyebrow -pairs. The proposed scheme may be best suited for the later stage of classification using either the mappings or a template matching, because of its capability of handling rotational and translational variations.