Need multiple face tag IDs

[grafton84]

Just trying to get my head around the face tagging thing. A few questions and comments (sorry if these have been covered elsewhere):

• I need multiple names for the same person; eg. married name, maiden name, etc. Doesn't appear to be a way to do that.
• Why is there only one group to assign a person to (family, friends, etc.) Same problem w/ events; only one is allowed, seems odd.

Rob...

[Mario]

1. Use the Other Names person property for that.
This property was especially designed to manage maiden name, name changes, previous names for persons married multiple times etc.



2. Person groups are designed to quickly group persons by topics like "Family", "Friends", "Colleagues". Simple. Efficient.
For more complex organizations, please use IMatch categories. These were designed for that task.

Please see the related thread from yesterday: https://www.photools.com/community/index.php?topic=10350

[grafton84]

Thanks, but that doesn't really answer the first question. I see that I can add multiple names for a person. However, only the 'tag' shows in the viewer. I can't find an option to display a different name for the same person in different images. Also, if the tag is supposed to be unique, how would I distinguish between people with exactly the same name?

Rob...

[thrinn]

However, only the 'tag' shows in the viewer.

If you want the Full Name or Short Name to be displayed in the Viewer instead of the tag, see Preferences > Application > Face Annotations.

I can't find an option to display a different name for the same person in different images.

I don't think there is an option for this request. How is this supposed to work? How should IMatch know which name you want for a person in a specific image? Maybe you should consider using Categories (or Keywords) for this.

Also, if the tag is supposed to be unique, how would I distinguish between people with exactly the same name?

That's up to you. You could, for example, add some sort of suffix or numbering or whatever. If you do not use the Tag for display purposes, this should not be a problem. The Full Name, on the other hand, can be the same for different people.

[Mario]

The tag must be unique. Names must be not. You can have persons named "John Miller" multiple times, with different tags.
This is the reason for having a tag, and names. To deal with people having the same name but being able to uniquely identify them. And to allow for people with different names over time.

If you use the name as the label instead of the tag and you have 5 persons with John Miller, they will all show in the Viewer as "John Miller". Although that's unlikely and even if it happens should not cause a problem - you should be able by looking at the person to know which "John Miller" it is. Or use the unique tag. Which could be "John Miller" but also something like "John Miller, from the Ohio branch of Millers".

This is why I have designed IMatch to use full name, short name and other names. Because this gives users a lot more freedom than something fixed like 'first name', 'middle name' and 'last name'. Which only works in some countries anyway.

The Viewer (like most other people-related features) shows the label, not the tag. As explained in the People help topic: Person Label
As thrinn pointed out above, you can choose what to use as the label (from the supported person properties).

It can only show one label per person. There are no person labels per image. If you need such a thing, consider using categories or keywords. Which you can show in the Viewer (per file), and also in the File Window (per file). You can also list all persons (labels, tags, or names) in the File Window under each thumbnail. Just select the information you want to display from the Simple Layout Editor

[grafton84]

Thanks for that; it partially answers the question. I didn't know I could select something other than 'Tag' to display in the viewer. However, I suppose I'll have to decide which 'name' to use for all images of the same person; perhaps just leave off the last name (which changes sometimes).

Rob...

[Mario]

Changing last names, bridal names, birth names etc. usually go into the Other Names property.

[Tveloso]

...and as suggested in the previous posts here, you can use Keywords to assign the multiple names for a person.  You can set any number of Keywords in a Person Record, which will be added to the file whenever the person is assigned to an annotation in that file.

That's the approach that I use...for married Women, I set their current (Married) name as the tag that displays for the Annotation (or it can be the FullName, as discussed in other posts), and then set two "WHO Keywords" for the person (both the Married and Maiden Name).

So for photos of Jane Smith...after she has married John Doe, I'll update her Name and Tag to "Jane Doe", and then add both WHO|People|Smith|Jane and WHO|People|Doe|Jane as Keywords on her Person Record.  This of course means that all of her Face Annotations (even in Photos of her as a child) will say Jane Doe, but both names will appear in the Keywords (and all her photos will appear in "both places" in the @Keywords Category).

[grafton84]

So for photos of Jane Smith...after she has married John Doe, I'll update her Name and Tag to "Jane Doe", and then add both WHO|People|Smith|Jane and WHO|People|Doe|Jane as Keywords on her Person Record.  This of course means that all of her Face Annotations (even in Photos of her as a child) will say Jane Doe, but both names will appear in the Keywords (and all her photos will appear in "both places" in the @Keywords Category).

Yes, that was what I was trying to avoid; having a newer name display on an older image prior to the name change. I suppose it can't be avoided. Thanks for the clarification.

Rob...

[Mario]

The only way to handle this particular problem would be a feature which allows to link person names to specific dates on a sort of timeline.
And I think this would be a bit over the top and would complicate things internally and for all users, even if they don't need it.
As always, feel free to post a feature request in the appropriate board. Other users will see it, maybe discuss it and +1 it if they like it.

But, such feature would cause a lot of complexity. In all features dealing with persons in some way. Display. Input. Editing of person properties. Searching.
Or, just consider how complex a variable like {Person.Name} would become - because we would need a way to specify the point in time for which to retrieve the persons name. Or maybe an option to retrieve the name of the person relative to the date and time of the image. Way to complex for very little use cases.

One quick solution could be, maybe, another option for the global label property. Something like "Name (Other Names)" which would show the Name property and the other names, if provided, in ().
But that would most likely break the layout in the Viewer - the label can only be one row and it's already quite big if the faces are small...

I have users use names like Susan Miller (born Johnson) or just display the label and the contents of the "other names" property in the File Window to make things clear. Or keywords. Or categories. So many ways to handle this more or less efficiently.