Questions about automatic facial recognition, marking a face, and adding a People Tag to an image

[cj02139]

1. Assume one photo in Organizer of my daughter. Facial recognition is ON. She gets found and appears in a stack in Unnamed People. I provide a name (e.g. Ann). A facial stack with the name Ann gets created in Named People. Is that the only place that "Ann" appears? Will a Tag of some/any kind get automatically created such that it will appear in the Keyword/Tags/Info sidebar on the right of the Media display view? Where? That is, in which 'section'- Keywords, People Tags, Places Tags, Event Tags, other?

2. Assume two photos of me are added to the Organizer. Facial Recognition is turned OFF. I create a People Tag called Bob. I drag that tag to one of the photos of me. I turn on Facial Recognition. Will it find my face on both photos, or only the un-tagged one? Assuming that it finds both, I get an Unnamed People stack of two images of me. I provide the name Bob to the stack and it appears in Named People. Clicking on it shows two photos of me. I return to the Media View. If I check the search box next to the People Tag 'Bob', will PSE show only the one file that I manually tagged, or will it show both files (manually tagged and facially recognized)?

3. I add a photo of Ann and Bob walking away from the camera. No faces are visible. I manually add tags Ann and Bob to that photo. I go to the Photo View and click on Ann. Will I see two circles there, one with her face and the other a grey/generic circle? If I mouse over the grey circle, will organizer show the photo of us walking on the beach? If so, did facial recognition have to have been running, or did PSE just do that?

4. re #3, from what other source (if any) can 'grey circles' appear in a Named Person display?

5. I add a photo of Bob and Ann facing the camera. Ann is up close; Bob is further back and slightly turned. Facial Recognition finds Ann, but not Bob (or at least, not right away). So I use the Mark Face feature to select and name Bob. Is there any difference in how PSE stores the information that both Ann's and Bob's faces are in this photo? That is, a face getting recognized automatically is not "better" nor "treated differently" in any way than one manually marked?

6. I add a photo of Carol, Bob, Alice, Ted. All have wonderful, close, full face views. Facial recognition is OFF. Is there any action that I can take with respect to that photo that would cause Facial Recognition to ignore or fail to find any one or all of the faces in the photo? That is, if I manually tag the photo, or manually mark a face, or do anything else? NOTE - I am NOT looking for this capability. I am looking to know when or why I might see facial recognition 'fail' when it would otherwise be expected to find people.

7. I presume that facial recognition marks a photo in some way (in the database) that it has processed the photo.  How can I know?  Is that in 'info' somewhere?  Is there a way to see it?  Is there a way to force facial recognition to 'revisit' an image file and 'try again'?

Thanks in advance for any answers.  Also, for any 'education' you think you might provide based upon these questions.

   -ceej

[Greg_S.]

I will try to answer your questions in the order you have asked them:

1.  Keyword tags and People tags are treated entirely separately.  But, in theory, you could have both a keyword tag and a People tag for Ann.  I don't recommend that because it gets confusing.  Some users only use keyword tags and some only use People tags to identify persons in their photos.  Personally, I am a big fan of facial recognition and use it extensively.  But for different reasons, I may end up with keyword tags for those to whom I have given a People tag.  When that happens, I will apply the People tag to those photos and delete the keyword tag.

Both kind of tags are visible in the Tags panel hierarchy.

You can check either kind of tag box and the grid will be filtered to show only photos of that person.  But, and here's where it gets confusing, if you have a keyword tag and a People tag for the same person, and check both boxes, the grid will be filtered to only show photos that have both a keyword and People tag of that person.  (There are ways to change that search criterion.)  Keyword tags and People tags also have different icons that appear in the details view of the media grid.  In the following screenshot, I have both a keyword and People tag applied to Papa.

Both kinds of tags are also visible in the Search dialog:

Names that are applied to People stacks will only appear under the People category.  However, if you were to import a photo that already has a People tag applied into another catalog or even the same catalog, you will be given the opportunity to import the name as a keyword tag.  If you accept that option, the name will be placed in the Imported Keyword Tag category, not the People category.  It is impossible to drag a keyword tag to the People catagory.

2.  I have never performed the task that you have suggested, but here is my expectation of what will happen.  Whenever you turn face recognition on, it will analyze all photos not previously analyzed and will find all faces of Bob.  When you manually drag a People name to a photo, the People tag will be applied but the People stack will show only a generic thumbnail, not Bob's face.  If you check the People tag box in the Tags panel for Bob, all photos with the People tag Bob will appear in the Media grid, whether or not facial recognition has taken place on that photo.

3.  When People tags are manually applied to a photo, no circles will appear in the Media grid unless face recognition has found a face.  It is also possible to use the Mark Face button to add a circle to the back of someone's head.  The circle will appear over the area you have marked with the name of the person; and the area you have marked will also appear in the People stack for that person.

4.  The grey generic thumbnails will appear if you manually drag a People tag to a photo.  It can also appear if you had a catalog from an earlier version of Elements (before version 10 I believe) and the catalog converted the Keyword tag under the People category to the new system People tags.  There may be some other unusual situations where this can occur, e.g. if you were to delete the .json files from the computer.  This would remove all of the source information for the face recognition without removing the People tag.

5.  Naming a face through face recognition or via the Mark Face button should not make any difference to how the tags are treated.  See the last part of my answer to 3. above.

6.  The only way face recognition will not work on a full face, well exposed photo is if you apply the Don't Show Again command to a face that has been recognized.  (You could also reset all face recognition information in Preferences.  But this will cause face recognition to analyze every photo again.)

7.  I assume that if you know enough to dig into a sqlite database, you will find the face recognition information somewhere.  But it is not readily visible within the program.  There is no way to force face recognition to visit a photo again other than through resetting face recognition in Preferences.  I suppose it may be possible to do it if you delete the photo from the catalog and then import it again.  I don't know for sure whether this would work but it probably would.  Better practice would be to use the Mark Face tool.

I think your questions have exhausted my knowledge of face recognition, but if you have any further questions, I will try to answer them.

[cj02139]

Wow!  Thanks for such a detailed (and quick) response.  I need to re-read more carefully, then I know that I have at least one question.  Also, as I was dropping off to sleep last night, I realized that I could test this more easily than I had thought.  I should be able to just create a new/empty catalog and perform the steps as I asked them.  If I do that I will report back as well.

[cj02139]

OK, I have created a new catalog and am going to try to answer my own questions!
FIRST - and REALLY IMPORTANT - go to People view and UNCHECK HIDE SMALL STACKS!
Otherwise nothing will show until some face is in 5 photos! and you will tear your hair out trying to figure out why FR is not running.

1. I added a full-face fontal pix of one person; appeared in unnamed-people. I gave it a name (Ann). The stack disappeared and re-appeared in named-people. AND a People Tag of that same name appeared. I dragged it down to Family.

It appears that every unique face that is identified results in the automatic creation of a People Tag if one does not already exist.

2. I turned FR OFF, then imported two photos of me. I added a Keyword Tag = Bob. PSE required me to select a category; I picked Other. I dragged Keyword-Bob to one of the photos. Then I turned on FR. Both photos of me appeared but in separate stacks; not enough initial likeness I guess. I selected both, told pse to merge, and gave Bob as the name. A People Tag = Bob automatically appeared. I moved it to Family group. Selecting People-Bob shows two photos; selecting Keyword-Bob showed only the one. So, indeed, those two tags are completely independent, even with the same name. I agree that this is expected behavior.

3. I import a photo with no people in it (to be sure FR is not involved). I use People-Ann to manually tag the photo. This simulates the 'walking away from camera' scenario. I switch to People view and the Ann stack has '2' entries. I look at faces; I see the original face in a circle and another grey circle with a person icon in the middle. If I hover over it pse displays the photo that I tagged manually. !! So if I use People Tags to manually tag photos they will appear in the appropriate people-stack.  AND, if I manually create a People Tag and use it on photos, a named-people-stack with that tag-name will appear, even if FR never found a face in that photo.

4. I don't know the answer to this question.

5. I add 4 photos of a boy, none of which has a great face view. I add a People Tag for him (PBJ) and use it on one of the photos. A PBJ stack appears in the People view with a grey circle icon. Back to Media view, I click another - but the Mark Face button is not visible. If I right-click I can Add Person, which I do, using PBJ. (I can actually continue adding people).
Note - Mark Face seems only to appear in single-image full-size view.
I don't imagine that there is any difference in how auto-FR and manual-mark-face are identified or treated.

6. I turned FR OFF. I added a photo of PBJ, father, mother, sister. I created People Tags for father, mother, sister and marked the photo with those tags - but not PBJ. Then I turned on FR. FR processed the photo, found PBJ, and asked me in two places: (a) when i hovered over his face in the photo a circle appeared suggeting his tag, and (b) when I looked at his stack in people view there was a 'notice' icon next to it and his face from the photo asking me to confirm.
The father, mother, sister all had unnamed-stacks waiting to be identified. Even though there were 3 people tags on the photo, FR does not know how (or if) to match them to the faces it found.

7. Likely no way to see FR info except via some dtabase tool.

8. (new) I confirmed that if I select photos with keyword metadata, and if I choose to import the metadata values with the photos, then new tags are created in Imported Keyword Tags (and cannot be dragged elsewhere).  BUT, you CAN map those metadata keywords into existing People Tags! and they will show up automaticlly in named people stacks.

Whew!

OK, I'm done with this now. I am glad that i learned that creating a new empty catalog for testing is easy.

  -ceej

[cj02139]

You said:

2.  I have never performed the task that you have suggested, but here is my expectation of what will happen.  Whenever you turn face recognition on, it will analyze all photos not previously analyzed and will find all faces of Bob.  When you manually drag a People name to a photo, the People tag will be applied but the People stack will show only a generic thumbnail, not Bob's face.  If you check the People tag box in the Tags panel for Bob, all photos with the People tag Bob will appear in the Media grid, whether or not facial recognition has taken place on that photo.

I notice that as FR "learns" about faces (i.e. I mark additional face stacks that are people that FR has recognized in other photos), it assembles other faces that it has not shown me before into new unnamed stacks. So, being the curious person that I am, what's the process here?  How does FR know to 'go back' to a photo?  Does FR really only look at a photo once, finding all possible faces in that one visit/pass, and then store that facial information somewhere (breeze data files?)?  Some faces get grouped with others in a stack, awaiting identification; and others cannot yet be grouped (their id-characteristics are yet 'too fuzzy')?  When I ID a previously unnamed face, does FR then rescan face-data-info (from where?) to find unnamed faces that might share characteristics with the newly IDed face?  This is all just an intellectual curiosity question, should anyone know anything about it.