In this tutorial, we want to give an overview of existing methods to extract, describe and use local invariant features. In particular, we aim at providing a practical guideline for anyone considering the use of local features. To this end, we intend to focus on issues like how to use local invariant features, how to select the right level of invariance, which type of features to select for a specific application, what to expect from them, general do’s and don’ts, etc. The first part of the tutorial will present the different methods proposed in the literature for extracting local invariant features, followed by a discussion and comparison. The second part will focus on different applications, explaining practical algorithms for matching features, checking consistency among feature matches, indexing, clustering features, etc.