Inspiring

Question

How can I export people tags with associated faces to the web?

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
November 2, 2017
9 replies
11861 views

I have some vintage photos (taken at least 100 years ago) that I've carefully tagged using facial recognition in Lightroom Classic CC. I'd like to share these photos with each photo tag preserved above each face with family and genealogical societies. In some cases, I have class or sports team photos, and identification of the individuals in the photo holds a great deal of value for the people I'm sharing the photos with. Is there any way of exporting people tags with associated faces to the web?

SDK

M

msavazzi

Participant

previous solutions does not work anymore as Lightroom does not have any api to access face data, so plugins are not available or not working.

you can look at: Lightroom_Face_to_Metadata to see it can help you

E

ExUSA

Legend

If the face data is written to file metadata, it is accessible. You may need to do some custom scripting but a combination of EXIFTool, Bridge, and Photoshop could handle this pretty easily (again, as long as the data is in the file.)

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Colin Osborne

Participating Frequently

I agree with @ExUSA: the existing flows still work fine, if the face data has been saved to file metadata.

(I'm no expert on the LrC options, but looking online I interpret that metadata saving can be done either per-file, by doing a manual save, or automatically by setting Lightroom Classic, Catalog Settings menu, Metadata tab, "auto-write XMP" option. To find out more, search internet for something like: "LrC save exif metadata")

I hadn't used my plugin (linked earlier in this thread) actively for a while, but dusted it off this weekend to re-test it (and took the opportunity to make a couple of improvements). It still works fine.

D

DS256

Inspiring

I've been looking around for information on your topic since I realize I may want to use the answer in pictures I will be scanning and/or my wife's genological work.

I did find a couple of things that I will leave with you:

There is a series of XMP tags prefixed with "PersonInPicture...". They are not exposed in LR.
You question was previously asked in 2017. Here's the thread.
Just another discussion point.
Here's a discussion on the related standards around identifying people in pictures.

So, disappointing that there is nothing more given the heighten interest in family tree research these days. You may get insights by Googling ' "Digital Asset Management" for genealogy '.

For the moment, you may better just using LR Faces and naming. At least you will have the information centrally managed and availabile.

D

DS256

Inspiring

I think I misread some of the postings about what LRc will export in terms of people's name set up with Facial Recognition. It does export the names in both and XMP and IPTC metadata tags.

Now, back to the original question " Is there any way of exporting people tags with associated faces to the web?" this thread identifies that:

The FaceLabellingExportLrPlugin if you want the name in the picture
As metadata XMP:Subject and IPTC:Keywords. However, this does not identify the name with the face.

Here's what I found from playing around. I also changed names to see how things were affected.

$ exiftool -xmp:subject -iptc:keywords S-026-T-001.jpg
Subject                         : ?, Bill, Gail, LOW RES, Richard, Rose, SLIDE
Keywords                        : ?, Bill, Gail, LOW RES, Richard, Rose, SLIDE

$ REM Change Some Name Assgigned to Faces

$ exiftool -xmp:subject -iptc:keywords S-026-T-001.jpg
Subject                         : Betsy, Bill, LOW RES, Richard, SLIDE, Sally, Shella, Sue
Keywords                        : Betsy, Bill, LOW RES, Richard, SLIDE, Sally, Shella, Sue

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Colin Osborne

Participating Frequently

Hi @DS256, for well labelled image files with exif data available, I suspect you should probably be able to find what you need in the exif metadata.

Context

The way I read this thread, I interpreted there are 2 levels of detail ... firstly just /having/ the person metadata, and secondly /visually/ showing that on an image. The second point is where I started with the LRc plug-in concept, since I had lots of carefully labelled images with person metadata in EXIF, and there are plenty of programs and online platforms where you can point at people one at a time to see who they are, but I had never found anything that allowed visual annotation of all the people on the image for publishing, whether online or in print.

As you say, LRc can include the person metadata in the image export, though it can be enabled/disabled in the export dialog settings, so needs some care to get what you need.

ExifTool and Region Metadata

You have found and used the amazingly powerful exiftool, which has both a wealth of helpful information online and an expert and active community using it and answering questions. As mentioned above, my plugin uses exiftool to access the image file metadata. I have chosen to put much of the complexity into an exiftool 'config file' (basically a bunch of exiftool supported perl code) to handle different metadata standards (e.g. Microsoft, MWG, IPTC) and the different tag names and coordinate systems that they use. I'm sure it is not the most streamlined implementation, so could well show its limitations on bulk exports, but it felt like a decent partitioning of functionality for clarity and future maintenance. See file currently named "get_regions.config" in the github repository as per link above (I won't give a file link here since I might break it in future if I do any file renaming or structuring in my FLE plugin).

In that exiftool 'config file', I also try to handle the surprisingly complicated implications of rotation and crop, and whether those have been already applied or not. I didn't find any good documentation or examples on how to handle that, beyond a few useful illustrations of what the rotation scenarios looked like, and from what I have seen I have the impression there are many variations and inconsistencies in how these fields are used in the wild. So I fully expect to find cases that I have not handled correctly.

Anyway, that is complicated background on why there isn't a one-line answer, but not yet addressing your question about names per face/person ... see the following which might help:

Examples of viewing region metadata

If you want to see all the region data, including names per face-region (if image file is appropriately labelled in metadata), then if it is in MWG format (from the 'Metadata Working Group') then you should be able to use:

exiftool <image_file> -j -XMP-mwg-rs:all

If the region data is in Microsoft format then this should help:

exiftool <image_file> -j -XMP-MP:all

Notes:

If exiftool isn't in your search path then include full executable path & filename
Insert your image file path & name in place of <image_file>
There is also an IPTC format which I support in config file but haven't given an example above
If you try to do anything with these regions, be aware that the different formats use different coordinate systems (e.g. centred vs top-left) to locate the face regions

C

Colin Osborne

Participating Frequently

Ok, here we go ... a first (hopefully fit for initial sharing) face labelling export plug-in for Lightroom Classic:

https://github.com/colin0brass/FaceLabellingExportLrPlugin

Please be patient with it (and with me) ... I hadn't even used Lightroom until about 5wks ago, let alone looked at Lightroom plug-ins, or ever seen the Lua programming language. But I've done my research, implemented a few prototypes, and applied my learnings to this first plug-in development and publishing on GitHub.

It does need some helper apps installing. I have hopefully included a workable version of exiftool in the plug-in bundle, but it definitely needs ImageMagick separately installing (which on Mac also needs ghostscript separately installing, though it is easier on Windows).

I suggest that first trials are probably best suited to fairly computer-literate people who could help to work through any teething and portability issues.

Please let me know if you do give it a try, and especially if there are any things I could learn from and improve on.

Regards

Colin

torroslo

Participating Frequently

This is a terrific concept, as it appears I am not the only one that would like to do exactly what this plug-in provides. I have downloaded and installed it with its helper apps and was able to see it export my selected photos. Alas, the exported images did not show the annotations I was hoping for (the images seemed unaltered). I would be willing to help figure this out to see what is not working. What is the best way to do this?

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Colin Osborne

Participating Frequently

Thanks for the feedback. I /think/ that might be the same issue that was raised recently on my github project page under the following issue: https://github.com/colin0brass/FaceLabellingExportLrPlugin/issues/2

I have just answered it there, but in short I suspect it is metadata export disabled in the LrC Export dialogue box, and my plug-in currently does not sanity-check that setting, over-ride it, or give any warning.

If so, I think it should be an easy setting for you to change during export for now (see a bit more context in the above linked issue ticket), and I'll look into how to handle this more thoroughly in the plug-in.

Regards

Colin

C

Colin Osborne

Participating Frequently

Further to my comment above (with different login) about previous face handling flow using Picasa, I am trying to 'bite the bullet' and set up a similar flow using Lightroom Classic. Since it appears there is no ready-made solution, I am having a go at creating one myself. Time will tell if I'm up to the task ...

My current proposal is:

1. Lightroom plugin for person face thumbnail export to image files

- reason: because I used face thumbnails (previously from Picasa) as the main person image on my family tree, which I felt looked good on Ancestry family tree view

- status: prototype Lightroom plugin working (at least on Mac) (using ExifTool under the hood)

- way forward: further development innevitably required; I probably ought to see if I can make it also Windows compatible

2. Lightroom plugin for multiple person face labelling (from exif data) and export to image files

- reason: to replace my previously nice looking but horribly manual flow of creating family history summary documents (or image uploads) with people labeled for easy identification

- status: working prototype implemented in python; reads the image and exif face region data (using ExifTool under the hood); has a go at finding 'best' locations & text-line-splits to annotate person information near the face region without overlapping any other face region or person label

- way forward: re-implement as Lightroom plugin; improve the optimisation of person labelling location & formatting; I probably ought to see if I can make it also Windows compatible

I haven't yet found a shared public domain repository of Lightroom plugins, which seems something of a missed opportunity if true. Ideally I'd like to make a plugin or two and put them somewhere others can pick them up and adapt them further if needed. My default proposal is to put them on github, though that does feel rather generic and harder to find than it would have been if Adobe had a community plugin sharing repository.

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Colin Osborne

Participating Frequently

I have made a working multi-person labelling (using existing EXIF data) photo export plugin for Lightroom (Classic), but I fully expect that tidying it up and making it robust and deployable is likely to take rather more time & effort.

See a simple obfuscated (highly faded image and randomised label text & digits) output below as an example.

For this example I have left the face region outlines drawn (in blue) to help make sense of what it is doing since the obfuscated image is barely visible. Normally the boxes would not be drawn.

The plugin detects collisions between labels and face regions, and tries several levels of experiments (including label position and number of line-wraps) to try to find a working layout. It only knows about the overall image dimensions and the face regions, so it clearly can't be as sophisticated about label placement over the underlying image as a human would be doing the same thing manually, however I think this could be very useful for automatically labelling a large number of images for sharing.

It currently decides a single font size based on average face region size vs overall image size. It seems to do a reasonable job based on around 80 of my family history photos, but I am sure it will need further refinement.

This clearly isn't perfect yet, for example I don't really like the ragged label text background, it shouldn't really be leaving the spaces at the start of wrapped lines, and the label text does sometimes come out a bit small, thin and difficult to read ... but it's a start ...

I would be interested to know if this looks to be heading in the direction other people have invisaged?

Again, my overall concept is that I make a plugin that works for me and make it available for others to use and adapt further if required. My remaining concern is whether I would be able to make it sufficiently portable and robust to work across a reasonable rage of computer types, software versions, file formats, photos and exif parameters, however I think I'll give it a go.

johnrellis

Legend

"It drives me crazy that Adobe does not embed all of the metadata into the files."

I don't know how Photoshop Elements handles face tagging, but LR does write all the face rectangles and names into a photo's metadata, following industry standards. (Unfortunately, only a few programs follow those standards, and one, Picasa, is long-defunct.)

[Use the blue reply button under the first post to ensure replies sort properly.]

johnrellis

Legend

See the posts later in this thread by Colin Osborne, who has developed a plugin for this.

~~[This post contains embedded images that don't appear in email. View the post in your Web browser to see the images.]~~

~~"I have the same issue - I tagged faces in old photos of my father and would like to share (or publish) them, with individual face tagging. Is there any suggestion? (original answer is from 2017)"~~

Unfortunately, I think the answer remains the same. Neither LR, nor any third-party program I know of, will overlay the face rectangles and face names on exported/published photos. (LR stores the rectangles and names in industry-standard metadata fields.) I think the best you can do is (painfully) make screenshots of LR's Loupe view with the face rectangles enabled:

~~[Use the blue reply button under the first post to ensure replies sort properly.]~~

R

RanDembo

Inspiring

Thanks, but its 1600 photos (from over 44 years), Scrrenshots is not the answer

A

Anonymous

I have been searching on-and-off for this feature for years and not found it yet. I'd love to know if anyone else has a solution.

The best setup that I had was in combination with Picasa, which could at least help with the face thumbnails, people management and thumbnail export.

From there however it was less than optimal, as I resorted to manually created & edited slide summaries (e.g. Powerpoint etc), where I pasted the main image, and dragged-in the various people face thumbnails and pasted-in the person details (e.g. <name> b<year>). I positioned the people details & thumbnails to align with where they were in the main photo to help with identification. It was quite tricky for photos of larger groups of people, but I always found a way in the end.

It did produce great results for family history summary documents, which I then shared online or sent off for printing & binding, and put out at family events, or gave as gifts. But it was very time-consuming and I would so like to find a more streamlined (i.e. automated) solution.

Does anyone have any better ways?

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RanDembo

Inspiring

I have the same issue - I tagged faces in old photos of my father and would like to share (or publish) them, with individual face tagging.

Is there any suggestion?

(original answer is from 2017)

S

StanleyLeary

Participant

I did a blog on this How to identify people in large group photos and projects – Storyteller

johnrellis

Legend

See the posts later in this thread by Colin Osborne, who has developed a plugin for this.

~~LR doesn't have this capability, and I don't know of any plugins that do.~~

LR does export the tagged face rectangles in an industry-standard format defined by the Metadata Working Group, but not many services or programs know how to interpret that metadata. (The now-dead Picasa does, any others?)

~~Perhaps someone else can make a suggestion?~~

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