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Photo managers with face recognition?

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JavaJones:
Oh I'm not a coder, so I need an existing end-user app. There are already a number of free/open source face recognition libraries anyway I believe. Certainly one that is being implemented in digiKam. And actually I have high hopes for that as the app itself seems quite nice otherwise too. So if the face recognition is good enough it could be an awesome overall option. Surprising as I've never heard of it before now. And being open source it's likely to have a pretty tweakable system as far as face recognition goes (at least I hope so). So I'm definitely keeping my eye on that. In fact it's available as source now I believe, so if any enterprising person wants to compile a Windows version, that would be awesome.

- Oshyan

kfitting:
IDImager is weak in this area (as of version 5.1.1) because the third party tools used are not yet reliable enough in the author's opinion (Hert is the author of IDImager, Hert's comment on Face Recognition) to open up all the features to for use by IDImager.  There are a few threads on the IDImager forum about this if you want more information, and a script written to import Picassa face data to IDImager (I have not used this so cant comment on it).

These programs (I bought and use Bibble and IDImager) are expensive because of their power and flexibility in other areas.  I use IDImager for overall image management/cataloging, and Bibble as my RAW converter.  Those are the things that matter most to me.  I am greatly impressed by the faces feature in Picassa, but am not willing to give up the other things.  If faces is what you want, then Picassa might be the best option for now (or iPhoto if you're a Mac user). 

To each his own.

JavaJones:
I'm with you generally speaking kfitting, Picasa is not nearly powerful enough for me. But I *do* really like the face recognition functions which is why I'm looking for a more high-end app that can duplicate this capability. I know that the high-end apps are expensive because of other powerful features they have, but then again apps like Sagelight Image Editor are cheaper (for now) and, while not as comprehensive, do have some pretty innovative and unique (and powerful) RAW-related processing functions (see Sagelight v4). Face recognition can be based on existing libraries which solves a good part of the difficulty of the problem, it's the UI implementation in IDImager that I'm disappointed with and I do think that's fully under their control and generally simple enough to "do right" that there's little excuse for the functionality to be so poorly implemented in present versions. As I said, Picasa gets it right, if nothing else they can use that as a model. In that thread you linked to, the IDI developer does say the auto-recognition functionality in their current library just wasn't good enough, which I can understand. But again I have to say, if others can do it, why can't they?

- Oshyan

CWuestefeld:
I've been thinking about this same thing for some time now. I've been meaning to embark on a giant project of properly organizing 20K-30K images. I've had ACDSee Pro for quite some time, but I've never actually gotten started. Part of the reason for this is that it seems that face recognition would be such a big jump start to the project, and ACDSee doesn't have it -- nor does it look like they *will* have it in their upcoming v4.

But reading this thread prompted me to look around a bit more, and I found a couple of things that might allow the overall workflow to be doable.

I think the conclusion for now is that Picasa is the best for the actual face recognition itself. It looks like with some extra tools, one could create a workflow where the images, once dumped to disc and maybe after RAW developing, get run into Picasa for face recognition. Then use a 3rd party tool to dump the Picasa face data into the image metadata, and then proceed as normal through your later editing and organizing (assuming that your editing will preserve those tags).

I found two such 3rd party tools that can dump Picasa's data into the image metadata. Quoting from their respective web pages:


* AvPicFaceXmpTagger - This program was written because of the new Google Picasa 3.5 face recognition feature. Due to the fact that Picasa 3.5 doesn't store the face recognition data inside JPEG pictures, this program fetches that data and stores it as XMP-MP meta tags inside the JPEG pictures. http://www.anvo-it.de/wiki/avpicfacexmptagger:main
* Picasa Face Embedder - Picasa Face Embedder takes the face data generated by Picasa and embeds it into your images. This enables Windows and software such as Adobe Photoshop and ACD Systems ACDSee to use the data. The software uses the database files that Picasa generates. These files hold the names of people that Picasa recognises in your photos and the rectangles defining where each person is. Picasa Face Embedder takes this information and embeds it into the files themselves thereby binding the information to your photos so that when you copy or rename your photos the information is still present. The software uses a simple drag and drop interface. To start using the software simply drag a folder containing your photos onto the main window and the software will begin processing your photos. http://cris.lovell-smith.com/downloads/picasa-face-embedder

JavaJones:
Nice work, I had come across AvPicFaceXmpTagger before but not Picasa Face Embedder. I'll look into that one. With either solution the problem remains that it is an extra step and requires a bit of annoying jiggery pokery for every update. So if I find an error after doing all my face tagging, I need to resync for example. And every time I add new photos I need to have this extra step.

Realistically all that would not be a deal breaker were Picasa's face recognition even consistent and 100% working. The sad thing is it works really well part of the time, not at all another part of the time, and only ok some of the time. The actual UI implementation is for the most part very good. The identification of similar faces is also fairly good. The problem is the scan process just dies sometimes never finishing detection, and there's no way that I can see to actually *resume* it and ensure it will finish. Either that or there are a lot of faces the system for some reason can't identify even though they seem a lot more obvious than tons of other faces it *does* recognize. Ok no, that latter possibility is very unlikely...

Anyway, thanks for chiming in. At least I have one more potential tool in the toolbox.

What I'm really hoping for is a coder willing to try compiling the latest digiKam 2 beta for Windows. :D

- Oshyan

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