P: Keywords with Person attribute exported even if Remove Person Info is selected

[John R Ellis]

If the Export setting Remove Person Info is selected, a keyword with the Person attribute will be exported if it isn't associated with a face rectangle.  To reproduce:

1. Create a keyword John.

2. Edit the keyword and check the Person attribute.

3. Assign the keyword to a photo.

4. Export the photo to disk with Include: All Metadata and Remove Person Info selected.

5. Use ExifTool to verify that the keyword John was exported.

Tested on LR CC 2015.12 / OS X 10.12.6 and Windows 10.

[ssprengel]

So the export setting removes the Face-detection info but not Person-attributed keywords.

Maybe the option should be entitled Remove Face Info or is that still not quite right?

And is there a need for removing the Person info aside from any Face-detection info?

[John R Ellis]

Remove Person Info removes Person keywords if they are associated with the face rectanges created by face recognition.  But if they're not associated with face rectangles, they don't get removed.

I think people want to remove the Person keywords regardless of whether they're associated with faces or not.  E.g. https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2382531

[t0bia_s]

What's the difference between face-detection keyword and person info?

[tmickow]

Couldn't agree more.

If I'm checking a box that says "Remove Person Info", my expectation is that ALL person-related info is removed, whether or not it's associated with a face rectangle created by face recognition or just a person keyword I created and assigned myself.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Alan Harper brought this bug to my attention. I've updated my Metadata Wrangler plugin [ http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/metadata-wrangler ] to work around the bug: when it sees that the "Remove Person Info" option is selected, it'll forcefully delete Person keywords (face or not) in the exported copy.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

I have asked the engineering staff to chime in on "expected behavior" here to see if we need a bug or a feature request. Stand by...

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I second this. If I check "Remove Person info" I expect all person info to be excluded from export, including keywords specifically marked as "Person".

It is also important that this not be delegated to the "Include on Export" keyword option, which is either always on or always off. Some export use cases clearly require the ability to include personal info, while others clearly require it to be excluded. (E. g. private vs. public use of exported images.)

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Engineering has responded thusly: 

The export is the as designed behavior currently. A keyword can be assigned to a photo or a face region. By default, Lr  only remove the person keyword on export if it is associated with an identifiable face region. To prevent exporting of keyword generally assigned to a photo, Lr has a separate “Include on Export” private keyword attribute. The current implementation gives that additional flexibility of exporting person keyword assigned to a photo, but not identify the person on a specific region of the photo.

Any changes to this behavior would fall into the realm of a feature request (Idea). 

[John R Ellis]

Thanks, I changed it to "idea".

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

And, I added a vote!

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

So to rephrase Engineering's reply: the label should be "Remove Face Info"


In the context of Lightroom, "Person" and "Face" are specific, different concepts.  If the option were to say "Remove Face Info", the actual behavior would match expected behavior.

That the label doesn't match the design behavior nor actual behavior is a bug. 

[John R Ellis]

I just tested this in LR 9.2.1, and Remove Person Info works as expected, removing a keyword with the Person attribute from the exported photo even if there is no face rectangle assigned that keyword.