1. A system for detecting hand posture using parts based template matching to detect individual human fingers, comprising: a processor; a reference camera configured to capture sequences of frames of video data, where each frame of video data comprises color information for a plurality of pixels; memory containing: a hand tracking application; and a finger template comprising an edge features template; wherein the hand tracking application configures the processor to: obtain a frame of video data from the reference camera; detect at least one candidate finger in the frame of video data received from the reference camera, where each of the at least one candidate finger is a grouping of pixels identified by searching the frame of video data for a grouping of pixels that have image gradient orientations that match the edge features of the finger template accounting for rotation and scaling differences; and verify the correct detection of a candidate finger by confirming that the colors of the pixels within the grouping of pixels identified as a candidate finger satisfy a skin color criterion.