Where are annotations storded?

[Aubrey]

Where are image annotations stored?
Is it only within the database or also in sidecar files?

The reason I ask, is that I mistakenly deleted folder (I should have read the IMatch warning messages more carefully  ) and on replacing folder from recycle bin and re importing, the annotations were lost. It may have been that I had not done a metadata writeback.

Aubrey.

[Mario]

IMatch Annotations are stored in the IMatch database.
This is an IMatch concept without counterpart in any of the metadata standard. Metadata cannot store vector data.

The only exception are face annotations which are automatically mapped to the corresponding face regions in XMP.
If you have removed files from the database which had pending write-backs, face annotations may be missing. Unless you have written them to the file, they will be gone when you remove the file from the database. Like categories or Attributes associated with the files you remove.

[Aubrey]

Thank you, for the confirmation. It's exactly what I thought was happening.
A.