Unable to Manually Draw a Box around a Face in an JPG Image

[Dronenz]

I am working my way through my images month by month and year by year, which is very time consuming. I have come across a number of images that ACDSee has identified faces in and attempted to allocate names. There appear to be a number of ways that the faces are "marked",

1, a box and a name,
2, just a box and no suggested name,
3, a box, a suggested name with a tick and an icon indicating not the person named.

Leaving me to manually name or change the suggested name.

On some group photos, there are any number and combination of the "selection" boxes identified above around faces, which is OK and to be expected. However on some images (not always group photos) it is not possible to manually draw a "Face box" around a face.

As a test in a group photo where ACDSee has automatically drawn boxes around faces but been unable to identify the face if I delete the "Face Box" (on a face I am not cataloguing) it disappears but I am unable to redraw the box around the face.

Initially I thought this was a feature of ACDSee and PNG images but it also occurs with JPGs. Does anybody have any clues to explain this behaviour..

[Greyfox]

..There appears to be a number of ways that the faces are "marked",

1, a box and a name,
2, just a box and no suggested name,
3, a box, a suggested name with a tick and an icon indicating not the person named.

Correct. The way I choose to look at it, face recognition is a two part process.
First ACDSee examines the image to see whether there is a face or faces that meet its criteria for auto identification as a "Face"

Then ACDSee tries to match that face to a particular person, based on previously identified faces.

Part 1
If the face or faces meet the program's criteria for a "face", ACDSee will draw the face outline "box" or boxes, and proceed to the second part of the auto process.

Part 2
If ACDSee can identify the person to some degree of surety, it will simply auto name the face or faces.

If it has a possible identification, but with a lower degree of surety it may provide a suggested name, with the option for you to either confirm or reject the name.

If the face doesn't match with any previously identified person, then it leaves the name bar empty for you to manually enter the name.

If the first step above is not successful, that is the face or faces doesn't meet with the program requirements for a "face", then no outlines will be drawn.

If you really want to name that face you can manually add the face outline "box" and name it in View mode using the Face Tool. Faces identified in this manner are not used as references when auto identifying other faces.

On some images (not always group photos) it is not possible to manually draw a "Face box" around a face.

You should be able to draw a face outline around anything you want to consider as a face. It doesn't have to actually be a human face. For instance in the screen shot below, I've added a "face outline" to a set of hands.

There is a minimum "on screen" size for drawing the outline box, and if you are trying to create a box that is too small, it gives the appearance of not being able to. If you zoom into the image further, so the box would be physically bigger, you should find you can then draw it.

[Dronenz]

Thanks Greyfox, that is exactly my experience and I'm cool with it, and I have been working through my images drawing boxes and adding and changing names merrily. BUT I still have a number of images that I am unable to draw a box around one or more faces in. I have enlarged them, reduced them, cursed them in the non biblical sense but still no go.

As a last thought I decided to see if I could "rescan/catalogue" a single image. In Manage mode, select the image, Tools/Face Detection/Re-run Recognition. This rescanned the single image, and identified a large number of faces (with the wrong names, they are not in the DBase) and the one face I wanted to name. Issue resolved, however there were still a number of faces that I could not draw a box around. I'll leave it for the moment.

[Greyfox]

... however there were still a number of faces that I could not draw a box around. I'll leave it for the moment.

Out of interest, can you take one of the images where you can't manually draw the face outline box, select it and in View mode use Tools\Face Detection\Remove Faces. Then using the Face tool see whether you can then manually draw a face outline box on the image (anywhere on the image).

[Regor250]

Often I think if ACDSee does not find a face within the drawn box it will not let you do it. It usually happens with smaller faces, and find that re-drawing the box with different size sometimes works.

[Greyfox]

Often I think if ACDSee does not find a face within the drawn box it will not let you do it. .

My experience is that the manual Face Tool (at least in Ultimate 2022) can draw outline boxes anywhere on an image, it doesn't need there to be a face, as is shown in the screen shot below where the outline has been drawn and named) on a solid color background. No practical use in this particular case, other than to demonstrate the point, but the tool does enable a person in a group photo to be named even when that person has their face turned away from the camera. It is sometimes useful in historic group photos to show that a particular person was present in the group at the time.

[PegLegs]

I have this issue too using Professional 2023, but it won't always allow me to draw a box using the Face Tool in View mode elsewhere in the image. Does anyone have more suggestions? Thanks.

[Greyfox]

I have this issue too using Professional 2023, but it won't always allow me to draw a box using the Face Tool in View mode elsewhere in the image. Does anyone have more suggestions? Thanks.

And when that happens, is it with a specific format of photo, i.e. RAW, TIFF, JPG, HEIC?
Also what is the pixel size of the images where this occurs, and the color depth?

When you say "it won't always allow me to draw a box" can you be more specific
You click on the Face tool, and move the cursor onto the image - Does the cursor look like the face tool icon?
If it does, you click to select the top left hand corner location - as you drag downwards and to the right, do you see the box appear?
If you do, when you let go of the left hand mouse button, what happens to the box? Does it, and the dark grey "name" rectangle stay on the screen, or maybe disappear.

Or is the box perhaps not being maintained, so when you subsequently look at the image in view mode it isn't there. If that is the case, maybe the information is not being added into the database. The co-ordinates of the box, and the name entered are initially added to the database entry for the image. It will be embedded in the image (or in the sidecar file if the format doesn't support direct embedding) as xmp metadata when you run Embed ACDSee metadata.

When this occurs, have you tried unticking "Enable OpenCL image processing" in Tools\Options\General

[hw3]

I've experienced the same issue as described by Dronenz and PegLegs . Format of the image file does not seem to matter (JPG, TIFF, etc). In each case there was a spot (seemingly random) on the image where a box could be drawn, then I manually resized the box, stretching and reshaping until the box captured the desired face.

[PegLegs]

Greyfox Here is one example: Format is JPG, Pixels 72 per inch, 24 Bit Color. I click the Face Tool and see the Face Tool icon, hold mouse button to draw from upper left corner and down but no box is drawn. Is the clue that Pixels must be a minimum amount?

There are 3 faces in this example, one face was auto detected. Of the other two faces that I cannot draw with the face tool, one is looking toward another person and that person is looking directly at the camera. I have been able to manually draw face outline on faces not directly looking at the camera but then I suspect those have higher pixels per inch. Thanks.

[Greyfox]

PegLegs

I believe the problem you are experiencing relates to the pixel size of your image being so small, and the minimum size of a face outline box is much larger that you are expecting it to be.

Try this.
Forget about the faces for the moment
On your image position the face tool just in from the top left hand corner and with the left mouse key held down, drag the box out towards the right hand bottom corner of the image.

When I do that here, the box will suddenly appear, and with the left hand mouse button held down, I can then move back until the box suddenly stops reducing in size, both in width and height. That is the minimum size box for that image. Note that the minimum size is much larger than any of the faces in the image I used.

The solution is having larger images.

[PegLegs]

Greyfox, Thanks so much! It finally worked starting all the way up in the upper left corner. I had tried drawing in various areas on the picture, but the far upper left did work. Good to know that the program has trouble with those small images which unfortunately many of us which don't have bigger versions and cannot be reproduced, but there's still a way to put face names.

[Greyfox]

Greyfox...unfortunately many of us which don't have bigger versions

Topaz Studio's Gigapixel AI generally does a good job of enlarging low resolution images

Their latest Photo AI also can also upscale images, and looks specifically at face quality. I've obtained really good results with that on some images.

Like all "AI" software, sometimes it's amazing, and some times it doesn't get it quite right. Good tools to have in the tool box, but not cheap.