Problem with importing face tags from picasa

[cgf]

I have decide to use imatch as my primary photo database application. Currently I am using:

- FotoAlbum 7 as my photo database application
- Picasa for face recognition

I have ~53k photos in my library and I went through face recognition in most of them. The problem I am facing is as follows:

In XMP section in many photos the  'Region Type' with the value 'Face' is missing, although the rest of region info like 'Region Name' etc have correct values.  For all these photos, the import process does not recognize that faces are exist.

Is there a way to correct the XMP structure or bypass the problem in imatch?

I am using Picasa for many years and I do not know how this problem came up. Picasa is configured to write face tags to XMP.

[Mario]

If a region is not marked as being a face region, IMatch cannot know what type of region it is.
I have never heard about this specific problem, but Picasa has introduced problems in metadata in may ways over the years.

Did you contact Google support about this? What did they say? Picasa is their product and they should provide support for it.


<rant>

Google did fiddle so much with it, then lost interest as so often, and now people who fell for the 'free' software now face the facts that some of their files have broken, incomplete or plainly messed up metadata.

Makes me wonder what all the people will experience who now use the cloud version of Picasa. Which not only feeds the neural networks at Google with faces and objects and 'your life' but also may cause tons of other problems in the future. Maybe Google loses interest in that as well, and then people have to move all their images out of the cloud again - with whatever metadata remains...

</rant>

As so often, it is probably possible to change the region type with ExifTool. I don't have the proper syntax at hand, though. XMP regions are a special, complex structured metadata set, that has not only to be treated special by ExifTool, but by IMatch as well. It's messy.

Please attach a sample file or send it to my support address with a link back to this topic. I need to see what Picasa did with the data before I can provide additional info.

[cgf]

Dear Mario,

Thanks for your immediate response.  I have attached a photo with two persons where the region type 'face' is missing. I will be very happy if we could find a way to correct the XMP structure. I have also notice that for the past 2 years all photos that I have process with picasa  the region type 'face' is present. For the' past years I could not figure out a pattern, but in most of the cases the 'face' is missing.

For many years I am working heavily with two applications that turn out to have no more support. I really need to move forward... 

[jch2103]

I don't know if this is the issue, but originally Picasa stored face information in its own database (or more precisely in .ini files in each photo folder). It was only later that they allowed face information to be stored in the photos themselves, in xmp structures. If that's the case here, it's possible to force Picasa to re-scan the folders to change how the information is stored.

I believe I have this problem on my to-do list...

[Mario]

This image contains an XMP region, but this region has no type.
The region type is optional, allowed values are Face, Pet, Focus and Barcode.

When reading metadata from files, IMatch considers only regions of type 'Face' as face regions.


There seem to be additional problems  with the metadata in this file. When I try to load it, Windows WIC (used in the Viewer / Quick View Panel) reports an "invalid argument" and refuses to load the file. Only when I delete the metadata in the file, Windows WIC is able to load the file.