Face Detection/Name Tagging

[McFallG]

I'm manually converting from Picasa to ACDSee with ~80,000 pictures & ~600 folders. When I first fired it up, it ran for days, I believe setting up a database. While that was happening, I started tagging faces on a couple large folders. I have discovered, unfortunately, that ACDSee must have referenced faces in those folders & applied them to faces in other folders. I reviewed/corrected all tags for Joe in the Joe folder, resulting in ~1,000 faces correctly tagged w/ the name Joe. I started the same process for a folder named Don, discovering lots of pictures of Joe where his icture is associated w/ the wrong name. Re-detected faces on that picture, but it will not tag Joe even though it should know him by now. This is happening time after time w/ various folders and faces.

Two questions:

1) For folks manually converting to ACDSee with lots of pictures/folders, what process should they use to avoid the problem I'm experiencing?
2) How do I make ACDSee associate the correct name when redetecting, as in the examples I used above?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Tristan H]

Hi McFallG,

Once you have manually named several examples of each person, and/or confirmed several suggested names, you can use the Rerun Recognition command in Tools > Options > Face Detection. This will remove all names that Facial Recognition automatically assigned, and all suggestions, leaving behind only those names which you interacted with (either by manually naming, or confirming suggestions). Then it reruns recognition on all unnamed faces. This process is fairly quick because it doesn't rerun Face Detection.

This should eliminate most of the incorrect names. Correcting some more names and rerunning recognition again will further improve recognition's accuracy.

Thanks,
Tristan H.
ACD Systems

[Joki]

I found out that rerun regocnition is a bad idea on family photos with small children on them. After teaching the system one baby's name, it did a pretty good job recognizing him. Later on, on newer pictures there was a another baby, who of course looked just like his older sibling. I understand the system would have trouble!

Anyway, I run rerun recognition because of another recognition problem. After that my original problem was solved, but now all the babies are assigned with the same name. Is there some way to lock the names of a certain person besides manual naming? For a human, babies are easy to tell apart just by sorting the pictures by the year taken, but it's a pain correcting the names on each photo manually. I also found out that now, with several babies on the system, the automatic regocnition results are quite unreliable.

Unfortunately the same problem seems to appear with elderly people as well. With them, recognition results are better than with babies, but still significantly weaker than with young/middle aged people.

Anyway, am I expecting too much trying to use the face recognition for babies/grannies or should I just give up and switch to keywords? The whole point of face regocnition is automatization which I don't seem to be achieving at the moment.

Thanks, Johanna

[Tristan H]

Hi Johanna,

Thank you for the feedback. We are aware that Facial Recognition is less accurate on certain groups, especially babies and young children. We have a list of improvements to facial recognition to be considered in future updates and releases, and improving recognition of children is on it.

For now, what may help you is to manually name additional faces for each person, especially children, and rerun recognition again. You may also want to try opening Tools > Options > Face Detection, and moving the Facial Recognition slider to Conservative. This will lower the distance thresholds at which recognition assigns and suggests names. We've found that this generally increases accuracy, although it comes at the cost of fewer automatic names overall.

Thanks,
Tristan H.
ACD Systems

[McFallG]

Hi McFallG,

Once you have manually named several examples of each person, and/or confirmed several suggested names, you can use the Rerun Recognition command in Tools > Options > Face Detection. This will remove all names that Facial Recognition automatically assigned, and all suggestions, leaving behind only those names which you interacted with (either by manually naming, or confirming suggestions). Then it reruns recognition on all unnamed faces. This process is fairly quick because it doesn't rerun Face Detection.

This should eliminate most of the incorrect names. Correcting some more names and rerunning recognition again will further improve recognition's accuracy.

Thanks,
Tristan H.
ACD Systems

I've been having some success w/ your suggestion. I open a folder, correct random names, select all pictures & Rerun Recognition. It's working, but very time intensive. It would be much better if users had the option at the highest Pictures level to Rerun Recognition on all or selected folders. By doing that, that functionality could potentially resolve problems recognition issues throughout a folder (without having to open a folder and select all) or all folders, depending on user preference & time available to run the function.

[Tristan H]

Hi McFallG,

You can rerun recognition on the entire database by opening Tools > Options, and going to the Face Detection options. There is a Rerun Recognition command here that will run on the entire database. I've attached a screenshot showing the command's location.

Generally this is the command I would recommend over Tools > Face Detection > Rerun Recognition, which as you pointed out only applies to selected files. The menu option is useful if you have just performed face detection in a new folder and want to rerun recognition on it without affecting other images, but for a first pass, running on the entire database is usually more effective.

Thanks,
Tristan H.
ACD Systems

[McFallG]

Hi McFallG,

You can rerun recognition on the entire database by opening Tools > Options, and going to the Face Detection options. There is a Rerun Recognition command here that will run on the entire database. I've attached a screenshot showing the command's location.

Generally this is the command I would recommend over Tools > Face Detection > Rerun Recognition, which as you pointed out only applies to selected files. The menu option is useful if you have just performed face detection in a new folder and want to rerun recognition on it without affecting other images, but for a first pass, running on the entire database is usually more effective.

Thanks,
Tristan H.
ACD Systems

Thanks. I wasn't aware of that option. Am running it now w/ fingers crossed.

[McFallG]

Thanks. I wasn't aware of that option. Am running it now w/ fingers crossed.

I'm going through some pictures where I manually tagged people, finding that the tags are gone after doing a Rerun Recognition for the entire database. I've spent untold hours talking with people to determine names - and now I need to start that process over. How/why are tags that I manually added going missing with a Rerun Recognition????

I've also been moving pictures from one folder to another, some one at a time, others by selecting several and dragging them from one folder to another. I've noticed that some pictures that I'm not touching are ending up in random folders. I've also run the database optimization (optimize, once; remove orphans, several times).

None of the things I've mentioned, though, should cause manually added face tags to disappear or files to randomly move. Now I'm wondering what else has gone missing, has moved, or broken in general. Call me very frustrated/disappointed, given the amount of time I've spent tagging folks in software that I thought was stable. Please escalate to your programming group and provide feedback asap.

[Tristan H]

Hi McFallG,

Are these images where you had previously used the Redetect Faces command? Redetect Faces will remove all face data from an image, including manually-named faces, and then rerun detection and recognition from scratch on that image. At that point, any names that are assigned are automatic names.

I have double-checked and confirmed that Rerun Recognition will not change or remove either names you typed or corrected yourself, or suggestions which you manually confirmed.

Thanks,
Tristan H.
ACD Systems

[McFallG]

Hi McFallG,

Are these images where you had previously used the Redetect Faces command? Redetect Faces will remove all face data from an image, including manually-named faces, and then rerun detection and recognition from scratch on that image. At that point, any names that are assigned are automatic names.

I have double-checked and confirmed that Rerun Recognition will not change or remove either names you typed or corrected yourself, or suggestions which you manually confirmed.

Thanks,
Tristan H.
ACD Systems

Not sure, but I use Redetect on individual pictures, primarily after editing them to ensure tags stay w/ the faces. Once it finishes, I correct those w/ wrong names & add tags for those that are missing. If I'm understanding you correctly, those tags should all be safe during a Rerun Recognition. Not sure what's going on, but there are way too many tags missing. Is there any way that removing orphan files could be contributing to this problem, removing name tags when removing files? If not, please keep this issue open because it's real and disturbing. I can go back to Picasa and sometimes find names & I can sometimes search through hundreds upon hundreds of pictures in a Facebook family group that I use to find names in pictures, but sometimes I've got names from photos which are now in boxes being ready to be distributed to family. I'm manually converting 80,000+ pictures from Picasa to ACDSee. Please help me get the level of confidence I had with Picasa where over years and years of use, I'm not aware of a single face tag going missing.

[Tristan H]

Hi McFallG,

Any names you manually add or correct, plus any suggestions you confirm, will be manual names, whether before or after redetecting faces. These names should all be left alone by Rerun Recognition.

I have not been able to reproduce any issue like this, but it is difficult to know exactly what is happening in your case. If you see the issue occur again with face tags you are certain were added or changed manually, I would recommend contacting Customer Care (https://www.acdsee.com/en/support/form/), as they can go into more detail in circumstances like this.

Thanks,
Tristan H.
ACD Systems

[Joki]

I'm still finding face detection to be unreliable. I'm going through my photos one by one, making sure I have the correct names on them. If needed, I'm using rerun recognition only one folder at a time, never on the whole database, as I learned earlier that was a really bad idea. Now, I've learned the names might still change on some pictures that I've already checked! A few I would understand, I might have overlooked them, but that's not the case.

How is this possible? Is it that these are the faces the system originally recognized correctly, and I never had to manually confirm them? And now as I go on tagging more faces, the system thinks it's getting better and tries to correct the earlier pictures?

If manually confirming each name is the only way to do this, I don't know what is the purpose of the whole face regocnition. A simple keyword would do the same job and be quicker too.

[McFallG]

I'm still finding face detection to be unreliable. I'm going through my photos one by one, making sure I have the correct names on them. If needed, I'm using rerun recognition only one folder at a time, never on the whole database, as I learned earlier that was a really bad idea. Now, I've learned the names might still change on some pictures that I've already checked! A few I would understand, I might have overlooked them, but that's not the case.

How is this possible? Is it that these are the faces the system originally recognized correctly, and I never had to manually confirm them? And now as I go on tagging more faces, the system thinks it's getting better and tries to correct the earlier pictures?

If manually confirming each name is the only way to do this, I don't know what is the purpose of the whole face regocnition. A simple keyword would do the same job and be quicker too.

I'm speaking off the top of my head, so I may have to eat my words, but I believe I'd be OK with facial recognition continuing to monitor/update suggested tags (those w/ a green arrow or red circle) or faces recognized w/ no name. But once a tag is set, the system should not be changing it. Your thoughts?

[Tristan H]

Hi,

So to reiterate, as far as I know, no named face will ever change or delete its name automatically unless you perform some kind of command on that image (e.g. Rerun Recognition, Redetect/Remove Faces). This applies to both manually-named faces, and faces that the system named automatically. Unnamed faces and suggested names will update automatically if a better/closer match is found, and might progress from unnamed to suggested to named.

The only other way I know for a name to change automatically is to open the People Manager (Tools > Manage People), and rename a person. This will update all faces with that person's name.

If you use Rerun Recognition, suggestions and automatic names are removed, leaving behind manually-added names and confirmed suggestions. Then recognition is run again on all unnamed faces. This is on either selected images (Tools > Face Detection > Rerun Recognition), or the entire database (Tools > Options > Face Detection > Rerun Recognition). This does mean that all correct automatic names are (temporarily) removed, and it is possible that a correct automatic name could be replaced with an incorrect name under specific circumstances. In my experience this is quite rare, but can occasionally happen in large datasets. The solution if this occurs is to name or correct a few more faces, and then rerun recognition again if necessary.

One suggestion I have seen in the past is the ability to "lock in" automatic names in order to make them into manual names. I think this could be quite useful, and I have previously passed the feedback on to the ACDSee product team for consideration in a future update or version. I'll include this thread in my notes as more feedback for this idea.

Thanks,
Tristan H.
ACD Systems

[Joki]

Face recognition really really irritates me. It doesn't seem to be able to recognize my son. 60-70 % of his pictures are named incorrectly and I have already named thousands of pictures of him. The program has 3 "favourite" names for him, only one of them his brother (in which case I understand the resemblance). He's 9 years old now, has recognizable features. Other children the program seems to be able to tell apart from 3 years up quite reliably. I guess there is nothing I can do.