Acdsee 2020 How to embed face data in file?

[Greyfox]

For what it is worth, my take on the original post is that peter09 was pointing out that the Name or names that went with detected faces were not showing in IPTC, EXIF or ACDSee Metadata as viewed in ACDSee, and that still applies from within ACDSee 2021.

With Keywords, when an image that has been assigned a keyword is selected, that keyword appears in the Properties->Metadata Tab->ACDSee Metadata section. So you can easily see what keyword, or keywords out of the hundreds you have generated has been assigned to that image.

With Categories, when an image that has been assigned a category is selected, it doesn't appear in the Metadata section as would be expected, but rather near the top of the Properties->Metadata Tab pane, where it is easily missed. However, again it is possible to see exactly what category has been assigned to that image.

When an image has a face or faces detected, the name or names associated with the faces doen't appear in the properties pane anywhere.

So yes, there is a strong case for adding both a face name field and categories field into the ACDSee Metadata display section, even if just for consistency, however I wouldn't want to see all the other associated face framing data fields shown. Screen real estate is way too valuable.

In terms of a user not being able within ACDSee to export specific metadata to external files. That applies to most of the metadata, with the exception that you can directly export a Keywords listing. However as with virtually all embedded metadata, if one does have an external use for any of the metadata fields, that can easily be achieved with ExifTools.

[stb62et]

Hello Greyfox
thanks for explaining the possibilities which are available now. This helps me a lot to understand the capabilities.I am searching as well for possibilities within ACDSee in this direction
Coming from the requirements a user like me has it looks like the following (my personal opinion)
I want:

1. to find people/ faces easily
2. that names of people/faces which are already tagged are displayed in an easy way as other properties of an picture (only names are important not where within the pciture)
3. in case i switch the software (or i sent the image to someone) i want that these people/faces are recognized (may be not the regions within the picture but at least that i am able to search,...)
4. this should be possible without using another software like exiftool which is realy great and powerfull but it needs some experience that someone is able to use this great sophisticated tool.

Within ACDsee as far as I can judge (using Acdsee2019) the

1. is fulfilled although i am not sure how consistent this search is in case you are searchable within Quick search, Search pane (F3),saved searches.....
2. is not fulfilled as it is not visible in the metadatatab pane
3. is not fulfilled as ACDSee save the information in propietary tags and not using tags already available. Exitool already provides some conversion configs
   see
   • Microsoft, IPTC, and MWG regions to ACDSee regions
   • convert from Picasa
   • but better would be AcdSee Developers would use standard tags like MWG or IPTC (other software vendors also invent their own tags which does not make life easier)
4. is not possible. The only way to populate different fields from an existing filed is as far as iknow metadata preset. But this tool is not offering any feature as far as i know to populate face data into an IPTC, EXIF or any other filed.

What is the standard way to communicate ACDSee Product Management from such requirements?? Without such a feature i will not buy any new software version as I anyway have to use other tools.
thanks
Stephan

[Greyfox]

What is the standard way to communicate ACDSee Product Management from such requirements?? Without such a feature i will not buy any new software version as I anyway have to use other tools.

I guess you could email [email protected] and set out your case. I have no idea how ACD Systems prioritize requests for product improvement, but I would be surprised if it didn't include some assessment .of popularity, the cost of making the changes and the liikely return on investment.

The face recognition metadata that is embedded in the images already contains the face names but they and the positional information are in the proprietary XMP-ACDSee section of the metadata, so I would not expect that to be readily transportable to other brands of software. .

Arguably IPTC metadata currently provides the best approach in terms of standardization and ACDSee already has the ability to copy keywords from ACDSee metadata to IPTC. (and vice versa) and that in my opinion is the best place to store the names for reference outside of ACDSee..

[telliott]

Anyone know why XMP data is hidden in ACDsee?

[Vintagehotdog]

I find this thread still relevant. Thank you (again) Greyfox for all the info. What I don't understand (June 2022) is how when I started using ACDSee Ultimate 2021 Feb. of 2021 it had Import Lightroom or Picasa Face Data under Tools>Face Data. I did use it and it did a reasonable job of importing Picasa face data. Now I just "upgraded?' to Home 2022 which I think would be better for me as I am a layman and use ACDSee almost exclusively to organize. Because I just got a new computer. Anyway, I see now there is also Import ACDSee Face Data. But I can find no way to Export the data! Which after using Ultimate for over a year I had all faces tagged and I have several thousand images. Any help is appreciated.

[Greyfox]

... just "upgraded?' to Home 2022 which I think would be better for me as I am a layman and use ACDSee almost exclusively to organize. Because I just got a new computer. Anyway, I see now there is also Import ACDSee Face Data. But I can find no way to Export the data! Which after using Ultimate for over a year I had all faces tagged and I have several thousand images. Any help is appreciated.

Tools\Face Detection\Import ACDSee Face Data reads only the ACDSee face data that is embedded in the selected image or images, into the database.

If you were moving from ACDSee Ultimate 2021 to ACDSee Ultimate 2022 then the normal approach would be to use Tools\Database\Convert database.
That would read all the entries in the Ultimate 2021 database, and write them into the new Ultimate 2022 database converting them where necessary.

I haven't personally ever had to convert a database from a previous Ultimate version into a current Home Version so I can't say definitely that it would work, but it would certainly be the first thing I would try. The source database is not changed using this process.

Alternatively, whilst still in Ultimate 2021, embed all your ACDSee metadata in the images (you may have already done this)

Then in Home 2022, use Tools\Database\Catalog Files. You will need to add the folders you want cataloged, and tick the Import from Cataloged Files boxes for EXIF and IPTC Metadata, ACDSee Metadata, and Face Data. Set the button to ACDSee Face Data. You can set the File formats to choice - my choice is normally Catalog images and Videos, and in Options, I normally tick only the Build and include thumbnails in database. Then start to catalog process.

It will read the embedded metadata from all of the images in the designated folders and write it into the 2022 Home database.