Acdsee 2020 How to embed face data in file?

[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.

[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.

[telliott]

Anyone know why XMP data is hidden in ACDsee?

[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..

[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]

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.

[Regor250]

My guess about the data structure wasn't far off, and as I said a many to many relationship, tx GreyFox (that would be familiar to those with database experience). The names alone are only useful as keywords. The multiple names could easily be parsed in a coma delimited strings, eliminating duplicates and added to the ACDSee keywords if that were to be a frequently asked feature but nothing is preventing me from doing this manually right now with a series of image queries if I really wanted to. I for one did that but can be tedious if one has a long frequently changing list of people to deal with so such feature could be useful I think (call it Export People Names to Keywords under Manage People) and should optionally work for either confirmed names or both confirmed and unconfirmed.

[StaffsLebowski]

<<What the OP is asking for is the ability to extract names from face data and store them where ever for some unstated purpose. Not certain how that differs from selecting files from a name and assigning that name as a keyword.>>

The difference is:

1: In the first example, the data is exported and available in a file

2: In the second, the information is embedded in the file

<<There exists no Face Tagging Metadata standard (ISO XXXX)>>

Within the current confines of metadata structures, surrounding names with a prefix/suffix would make extracting a name value from keyword lists at a later date, easy. For example:

holiday, Easter, ~John Smith~, party, Utah

[Greyfox]

To add to my previous post, and in case anyone wonders what happens with multiple faces in an image, here is the face metadata saved in an image with three faces identified.

[Greyfox]

Hello
nevertheless, i think the requirement from peter09 and emil are valid.

This thread was started quite some time ago and some of the content of the early posts is perhaps out of date.

The current version of ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2021 DOES allow for face detection metadata to be embedded in the image, and the Tools->Database-Catalog Files option can restore the embedded face metadata into the images should that prove necessary.

The following screen shot shows the XMP face metadata embedded in an image by ACDSee U2021, as viewed in ExifToolsGUI



As can be seen, it not only includes the Name, but also the region information for the frame.

Both the face frame and the Name that goes with it can be seen in view mode. The name can also be seen in the Catalog Pane under People, and can be searched on either using Quick Search, or be selecting the People->Name in the Catalog Pane.

[Regor250]

What the OP is asking for is the ability to extract names from face data and store them where ever for some unstated purpose. Not certain how that differs from selecting files from a name and assigning that name as a keyword. The best ACDSee could do right now is to provide a function to automate that process.

To my knowledge there exists no Face Tagging Metadata standard (ISO XXXX), hence no single way to integrate that information into a different system without knowledge of proprietary data structure stored in ACDSee database and the same goes for any other systems on the market. ACDSee could create a metadata system within its own ACDSee Metadata, but it would still be proprietary and hence not particularly useful to others. Until international metadata standard bodies come up with a standard, there isn't much anything of use to others ACDSee can do.

[StaffsLebowski]

Hi Prsettle,

<<the issue was more to do with where to store the face data inside the image file in a way that is compliant with existing IPTC standards and therefore making it portable.>>

You're presuming that a User wants to store face data in the IPTC. Storing this information in the IPTC has nothing to do with it. To what use, and where one decides to put the data, after it's been extracted - is up to the individual. The problem is, Users are not able to extract this information to do with as they wish. Therefore, I would definitely consider this as one of the ways a company tries to restrict Users from taking their photos and moving to another vendor.

Regards..

[Regor250]

What data is being asked? Names of course, but face data would also contain location within the image of a face image frame and dimension of the frame for each face and a unique frame ID (frameID, x, y, width, height, name, status) as the same person's name can appear more than once in an image (mirror image, picture frames etc.). It is therefore not as simple as a single data field containing all the names associated with one image, it's a relational many to many data elements structure (many people with many data elements) whereas metadata information usually is one to many (where one field can contain many elements such as keywords). Therefore if all that is wanted is names added to the keywords field that's easy, if you want face recognition info (name, location etc.) then it's a wee bit more complex to manage as metadata goes. I can't think of any many to many data elements supported in image metadata structure and in all likelihood would not be widely supported, so what would be the benefit of that?

[stb62et]

Hello
nevertheless, i think the requirement from peter09 and emil are valid. Where is a place within this community where we can articulate our product improvements which we wish to see in the next release

[Greyfox]

.....Up until December 2019 I don't think there was a standardized way of embedding face data into IPTC metadata. However, a quick google suggests that in December 2019 the IPTC standard was indeed updated to allow for such data to be embedded into the image files.

As I understand it, the fields relating to PersonInImage are actually in Extension v1.5 to the standard, rather than in the IPTC Core v1.2, and are Xmp fields. In my experience uniformity across the various image applications when it comes to Xmp is not all that good. Whilst it would be nice to have the ability to embed the names into images in some stardardized format, its usefulness outside of ACDSee would be conditional on other software providing access to it, and as is currently the case, create issues if other software doesn't retain it.

Like many others, I use keywords for the names.