Face Annotations

[crocothemis]

I added some 50 photo's with Face annotations and did write them to metadata.
Now when I copy these photo's to another computer with Imatch no Face annotations are present.
What I tried was copy database + photo's and still no Face annotations.
What do I do wrong?

Cheers,
Frans

[Mario]

IMatch stores face annotations also to the XMP record in your images.

- Did you enable the option to import existing face annotations from XMP into 'real' IMatch annotations? (Same configuration dialog)
- Did you write-back the metadata before you copied the files? Only then the XMP data in the files will be up-to-date.

Tip: You can check if a file contains face tags via the ExifTool Command Processor in IMatch.

Start the ECP via <F9>,<E>
Copy/paste the following arguments

-G1
-xmp-mwg-rs:all
-a
{Files}


Press <F9> to run.
This will show all region data on the right.

Note: If you work with RAW files which use XMP in sidecar files, replace {Files} with {XMPFiles} above.

[crocothemis]

Hi Mario,

Thanks for your reply.

When I execute the arguments in ECP no data is shown in the right window, in the Viewer face annotation is visible.
The image is a  .jpg
"Import XMP face tags into Annotations" = Yes
I have written back the metadatadata.

Cheers,
Frans

[Mario]

This sounds strange. When you create a face annotation, IMatch automatically puts the corresponding data in the XMP (I checked, it is created and written when I write back a file). Do you see "region" data in the Metadata Panel when you switch to the Browser mode?

[crocothemis]

In the Default Metadata panel I have 4 "subpanels": Collections, Core Data, GPS and Location.
Only in the Core Data there are some data, namely Date digitized and data modified. Most images are scanned photo's with a scanner and then transposed to .jpg.

[Mario]

Switch the Metadata Panel to the Browser layout (drop-down in the toolbar) to see all metadata IMatch has imported / generated for your files.

If you create face annotations in the Viewer, IMatch puts the corresponding metadata ("regions") into the xmp-mwg-rs XMP metadata section, which is normally of no interest to users and thus no part of any of the sample Metadata Panel layouts IMatch ships with.
If you can still see the write-back pen icon in the thumbnail for a file, metadata has not been written and what you see in the Metadata Panel does not match what's in the file. This data then only exists in the IMatch database and is invisible for other applications unless you write-back the data.

[crocothemis]

When I switch to the browser of the metadata panel I see (among others) the following tabs:
XMP media management, XMP exif, XMP x, XMP xmp, XMP TIFF.

I am sure the metadata has been written back.
Strangely enough when I choose Metadata write-back  for all files the message says "there are 1 files with pending metadata" no matter how often I repeat the write-back.

[Mario]

Face Data is listed in the MWG Regions namespace.




If you are having problems writing back metadata, you need to fix this first.
Which tags need to be written? Point the mouse at the write-back pen in the File Window to see which tags. Let us know.
Check the log file for problems, or attach so we can check.
We also need a lot more info, e.g. which file format you use, which metadata settings you use, which data your files contain etc.
If IMatch fails to write data, or the data in your files in combination with your settings cause some sort of infinite write-back loop, we need your image file as well to provide additional tips.

And, of course if you cannot write back XMP data to your file, no other application can see the face tags. Which explains everything.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[crocothemis]

First an image with face annotations (every face in the picture has one, see attachment).

I just encountered another problem: when I right-click on a picture with face annotations and chose "reload metadata into the database", afterwards the face annotations are gone...
I included the logfile.



[attachment deleted by admin]

[Mario]

Your log file contains no info about you writing back metadata to a file.
Please do the following:

- Switch IMatch to debug logging (Help menu > Support)
- Add a face annotation to a file
- Close the Viewer
- Open the ExifTool output panel via <F9><O> or via View menu > Panels > ....
- Click on the pen icon for the file with the annotation.

Select everything in the output panel (<Ctrl>+<A>), paste into Windows Notepad, save to a file and attach here.
Disable debug logging under Help > Support by switching back to "Normal".

This will show us which data is written, to which file, if ExifTool has problems writing to your file etc.

I've tried that with your sample file, and everything works perfect.
I've added some face annotations. Wrote back the file. The XMP data in the file is updated with the region data and the annotations remain even after re-importing the file. The XMP data in the file is also OK and shows the region data.

Do you use any custom settings under Edit > Preferences > Metadata or Edit > Preferences > Metadata 2 ?

[crocothemis]

Hi Mario,

See attachment.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Mario]

NEXT time: Please just attach plain text files.
Your conversion of the log file and output panel data into the RTF (rich text) format breaks the formatting and makes it very hard to read.
Just paste into Windows Notepad, not Word or anything. If you don't know how to produce a plain text file without using Office or whatnot, please let me know and I will explain.

From what I can tell, the regions are written to the file without any problem.
Please attach the file from this test as well so we can see if the region data was stored correctly.

[crocothemis]

Hi Mario,

I did the exercise again because the original file being too big

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Mario]

This file contains a face region in the XMP record.
I've added the file to a test database and the face region is imported and mapped into an IMatch annotation.
Looks perfect to me...?



If you enable the import of XMP regions into annotations under Edit > Preferences > Metadata 2 you should get the same result...



[attachment deleted by admin]

[crocothemis]

Hi Mario,

Problem solved, thanks for your expertise and patience