AvPicFaceXmpTagger

This program was written because of the new Google Picasa 3.5 face recognition feature. Due to the fact that Picasa 3.5 doesn't store the face recognition data inside JPEG pictures, this program fetches that data and stores it as XMP-MP meta tags inside the JPEG pictures.

The Picasa 3.5 face recognition feature stores the face data inside the Picasa database. As a consequence this data is lost when you give away your pics and this data cannot be shared with other users or with other Picasa instances running on different computers. Lukily Picasa stores the face recognition data (persons & faces) in quite simple text files so reading that data is not a big clue.

There is already a method available how to store face recognition data inside JPEG pictures. This method uses XMP tag system created by Adobe with the addition of Microsoft XMP namespace Microsoft Photo Region Schema and is used by Windows Live Photo Gallery.

Right at the start this program reads the Picasa text file holding the persons (contacs). Each person has assigned an unique person ID. For every file of for all files in a directory which is added to the list of files or directories the picasa.ini file is searched for face definition. If face definitions are found for a file, they are added as XMP tags. Optionally, the person names are also added as IPTC Keyword tags.

The actual tagging of the JPEG files is done using ExifTool - a great and widely accepted/trusted tagging program which is known for its good makernotes handling (to leave them intact).

Feature list for AvPicFaceXmpTagger:

• Read Picasa 3.5 face definitions for a given list of pictures and write them as XMP metadata tags inside the picture files.
• Optionally add the person names as XMP keywords and/or IPTC keywords
• The tagging work is actually done using exiftool
• Show detailed information for a picture file:
  • Picasa and XMP defined faces
  • XMP and IPTC keywords
  • Complete XMP data tree with file export facility
  • Complete EXIF, IPTC, JPEG tag tree with XML file export facility

I've created a forum for discussion about errors, enhancements and general issues for my programs.

Please check out the AnVoIt Software Forum

• Windows:
  • Microsoft .NET 2.0
  • The exiftool executable for tagging the pics is already built in. In case another version should be used you can download the ExifTool executable here.

• Linux: (not tested yet )
  • MONO
  • ExifTool executable

This program doesn't need any installation. It's just plain .NET executable and can be even run from USB stick or CD/DVD.

The Windows registry isn't used in any way. At program start the current directory is searched for the optional file AvPicFaceXmpTagger.ini which holds some program options. This file will be written/updated when the program terminates and if the current directory is writable.

Note about exiftool: The program comes with exiftool included in the executable. So you don't need to download exiftool yourself. But when you download and unpack exiftool you'll find an executable named “exiftool(-k).exe”. You need then to rename this file to “exiftool.exe”.

Usage: AvPicFaceXmpTagger.exe [-c <inifile>] [-r|-R] [ <file> [<file> …]]

Choosing this menu item a directory selection dialog box will open. Choose a directory to be added to the Files/Directory selection list.

Choosing this menu item a file selection dialog box will open. Choose one or more JPEG file(s) to be added the Files/Directory selection list.

Terminate the program. If the current directory is writable, the .ini file holding the program option is written/updated prior exit.

Choosing this menu item the options dialog will open.

This program needs ExifTool for tagging the JPEG files. With this option you can specify where to find the exiftool executable.

* Search exiftool in search path * Use this path for exiftool:

As a default this program uses the standard path to the Picasa contacts file. But you can define another path if some reason this standard path is not correct.

This dialog box shows the change log for the different versions of this program.

Information about this program and copyright notice.

At the start of the program or whenever the path to the Picasa contacs file was changed in the program options dialog, the Piacasa contacs file is read in. If the contacts file cannot be found, read or if there any contacts defined, an error message is displayed here and tagging will not be possible at all.

In this tab the directories or files to be tagged are specified. Either use the File→Add Directory… or File→Add Files… menu items or just add files or directories by drag&drop from a explorer window.

The checkbox “Include subdirectories” controls if for directories also subdirectories are scanned for pictures with Picasa face definitions.

Just for your information and for curious people interested in statistics, the number of directories, files, persons and faces which belongs to the current selection is displayed.

The option “Create backup files” controls if exiftool is required to create a backup file of the JPEG picture before doing the tagging. As a default this option is turned off as it will create a lot of files in normal operation when turned on. So this option is here mainly for testing and evaluation purposes.

The “IPTC:Keyword tags” and the “XMP-DC:Subject tags” options controls what to do with IPTC Keyword and XMP Subject tags. Both tags are string list tags - they can hold an arbitrary number of strings as it's value.

The IPTC:Keyword is used by Picasa. The XMP-DC:Subject tag is used by Microsoft. Basically it's a good idea to add the people names as tags.

There are following possibilities:

• Don't touch: don't touch this tag. Nothing will be deleted or added to this tag.
• Delete all: this tag is deleted entirely.
• Delete persons: only the person names or the person hash IDs are deleted from the tag. All other tag members remain.
• Add persons: the persons are added to the tag. Duplicates are avoided.
  • When you check the checkbox “and add. keywords” the keywords defined in the keyword list in the “Add. Keywords” tabs are added additionally during the tagging operation. This checkbox can only be checked if there are additional keywords defined.

The tagging process is started by pressing the START button. All directories given in the directory selection list are scanned for picasa.ini files and the corresponding picture files. All files in the selection list are searched in the picasa.ini file in order to find a face definition.

For each picture file with face definitions found the program creates/deletes the tags according to the options settings.

The tagging process can be cancelled by pressing the Cancel button.

The logging tab shows the exiftool command lines which were executed by the last tagging run. This output is mainly used for debugging and by curious people who wanna know how exiftool is called.

In this tab a simple list with all loaded Picasa contacts is shown. This list is currently just for information and of no real use.

This screenshot shows the main window of AvPicFaceXmpTagger.

In this list box you can define additional keywords to be added while tagging the pictures. The keywords are sorted alphabetically in the list. You can delete a keyword by selecting it and then pressing the <DEL> key. By pressing the “Clear” button, all list entries are deleted.

It is possible to save the keyword list to as text file (just a simple text file with one keyword on each line) with the “Save to file…” button. And of course a text file can be loaded into the keyword list withe the “Load from file…” button. When loading from file, all existing keywords are deleted.

This screenshot shows the options dialog for AvPicFaceXmpTagger.

This dialog box can be opened either by double-clicking on a filename in the file selection list or by selecting a filename and activating the “File Props…” button.

In the main view you can see the picture on the left side. On the right side some basic information fields are shown in the upper half. In the lower half you can see the defined faces and the defined keywords.

Whenever you move with your mouse on a defined face you'll see it's name below the face box.

Whenever you select a person, the picture will be dimmed and only the persons face remains bright. When no person is selected the whole picture will be shown normal again.

The XMP data is an XML structure. You can see here the complete XMP data structure as a tree. The XMP data can be exported to a text file by pressing the “Write XML file…” button.

You can see here all defined IPTC tags.

You can see here all defined EXIF tags.

You can see here all defined JPEG tags.

You can see here all defined tags (without the XMP data) as a tree. By pressing the “Write XML file…” button you can save the complete tag tree as an XML file. This XML file even contains the DTD.

• After my first experiences with Picasa 3.5 and when I decided to find/program a workaround for the missing tagging feature, I found this article How to Back up Name Tags and copy to an another computer in the Picasa Help forum which gave me the inspiration and the motivation to make my program available to the community.

• This article People Tagging Overview at the Microsoft Developer Network site explains and defines XMP-MP (Microsoft Photo 1.2) schema.

• Here is a list of XMP Tags used by exiftool

• A free tool provided by Microsoft named WICExplorer is able to show (not only) the XMP tags in a JPEG file.

• The Windows Live Photo Gallery which is part of the Microsoft Windows Live Essentials software suite uses and shows the XMP-MP face region tags.

I don't wanna charge for this program. On the other side, creating and maintaining this program took and takes time and donations are welcome.

So if you use and like this software you might wanna consider a donation.

• Release Date: 05.03.2010
• Download:
  AvPicFaceXmpTagger GUI Version 1.6
  AvPicFaceXmpTagger Console Version 1.6
• Note:
  I've tried hard to test as much as possible. Please, like always with a new version, test it with non-critical pictures or do a backup. And don't forget to report your experiences in the forum.
• Changes:
  • Added support for XMP sidecar files. If the checkbox “Use XMP sidecar file” is checked, then all XMP tags are written to the XMP sidecar file (that's the basename of the picture file with the extension ”.xmp” added) and the original picture file isn't touched at all. In this case all EXIF and IPTC tagging is unavailable. When reading XMP data, the data is taken from the sidecar file, if it exists. Otherwise the XMP data is taken from the picture file itself.
  • Optimized the tagging process so that exiftool will not be called for a picture file if no tagging is defined for that file. This will improve speed drastically for files without any faces and if no other tagging actions are selected.
  • Changed the tagging algorithm so it deals better with already defined faces in a picture and in update mode. The old behaviour was to delete all existing faces having the same face name as the to be added faces. The new behaviour now checks the overlapping percentage of two face rectangles having the same face name. There is a new configurable option in the option dialog specifying the percentage limit for two face rectangles. If two face rectangles overlap percentage is higher or equal this limit, then two faces definitions having the same face name are considered equivalent and the existing face definition will be overwritten. If the face names are equal and the overlap percentage is less than this limit, the existing face will remain and the new face will be added. In this case the overlap percentage value is added to the face name in the form ” (x%)”. In order to have the previous behaviour, set the limit value to 0 (zero) %.
  • Bug fix: fixed some problems which caused NULL pointer exceptions when showing the file properties for pictures which cannot be displayed by this program.
  • Enhancement: It's now possible to delete file or directory entries in the file/directory list view that is part of the main window by pressing the <DELETE> key.
  • New feature: added the possibility to add/delete XMP Lightroom Hierarchical Subject tags.

• Release Date: 24.02.2010
• Download:
  AvPicFaceXmpTagger GUI Version 1.5
  AvPicFaceXmpTagger Console Version 1.5
• Note:
  I've tried hard to test as much as possible. Please, like always with a new version, test it with non-critical pictures or do a backup. And don't forget to report your experiences in the forum.
• Changes:
  • Changed internal exiftool executable to version 8.10
  • Added -ignoreMinorErrors (-m) flag to exiftool invocation in order to ignore minor errors
  • Changed the default name for the options ini file from “AVPicFace2XMP.ini” to “AvPicFaceXmpTagger.ini”.
  • Upon termination of the program, the default options ini file is only updated if it already exists. The default options ini file will not be created by default anymore.
  • Now all file extensions are considered which are basically writable by exiftool.
    Namely these are:
    “jpg”, “jpeg”, “dng”, “cr2”, “nef”, “crw”, “ciff”, “cs1”, “dcp”, “erf”, “exif”,
    “gif”, “hdp”, “wdp”, “jp2”, “jpx”, “mef”, “mie”, “mrw”, “nrw”, “org”, “pef”,
    “raf”, “raw”, “rw2”, “rwl”, “thm”, “tiff”, “tif”, “xmp”
  • There is a new checkbox field (“Show all names on hover”) in the picture information form which controls, if all face names are shown on hover a face or only the face name of that face.
  • A bug has been elimanated which caused a program crash when parsing XMP face metadata (NULL reference exception).
  • The option dialog shouldn't crash anymore on Linux.
  • It's now possible to specify a format string in the options form for the IPTC and XMP name tags. The string ”{0}” will be replaced with the face name. BTW, the format string is used as the format string for the C# String.Format() method.
    E.g. the format string “face/{0}” seems to be fortunate for use with MS Live Photo Gallery (WLPG), as only the name after the ”/” character is displayed.
  • There is a new “Refresh” button for the file/folder list in the main window. Pressing this button will refresh the internal list of files to be processed and recalculate the statistic display. Use this refresh button when you moved/deleted one or more files in the filesystem.
  • I've created an additional XMP-AnVoItPicasa extension structure which holds the Picasa definitions for the contacts used in the picture (Name, Id, etc.). These values aren't used at the moment, but they could be used in the future to build up the Picasa contacts and ini files from scratch. Adding these tags is optional. The config definition can be saved to file or copied to the clipboard for further use with exiftool.
  • The tagging options in the main window for XMP-MP, IPTC-Keywords and XMP-Subject have been restructered. It's now possible to have a better control what tags are, deleted, updated or added. It's now possible to avoid tagging the XMP-MP face tags (e.g. to be able just to add IPTC keyword tags without anything else).
  • It's now possible to set/unset the 5-star picture rating tags in the EXIF, IPTC and XMP groups.
  • Bug fix: now files are not added to the File/Dir list if they are already part of a directory/subdirectory already in the file list.
  • It's now possible to search for error messages in the log file.
  • A new feature was added to define faces manually for later tagging. The faces can be defined in the picture info form by creating a with the left mouse button.
  • A command line version (console application) of AvPicFaceXmpTagger is now available too.

• Release Date: 14.10.2009
• Download: AvPicFaceXmpTagger Version 1.4
• Changes:
  • Starting with this version “exiftool” is included in the executable. When configured in the options to use the internal exiftool version, the internal exiftool is unpacked in the current directory or, if this is not possible, in the systems temp directory. Upon completion the executable will be deleted.
  • Bug fix: an error where an exception occured when a tag was found more than once.
  • Bug fix: the scrollbar in the contacts list is now shown.
  • Bug fix: the GPS latitude and longitude fields are now shown in full length.
  • It's now possible to start the tagging even though no face definitions are available for the pics in order to be able to just tag files with the additional keywords.
  • Bug fix: the additional keywords list dialog elements were not positioned correctly on resize.
  • Bug fix: the auto orientation handling for the pics has been corrected.
  • It's now possible to select multiple persons. All persons selected will be shown in a highlighted rectangle. All persons can be simply selected by pressing CTRL-A.
  • When the mouse hovers a face the name tags for all faces are shown.
  • Bug fix: XMP keywords are now written and read as UTF8.
  • Bug fix: IPTC keywords are now written and read as UTF8.
  • Now all JPEG files (with extension .jpg and .jpeg) are processed for tagging. Previously only files having a definition in picasa.ini were processed. Non JPEG files are silently ignored when trying to add them to the file selection list.
  • Added command line flag ”-c <inifile>” with which the inifile can be specified.
  • Added command line flag ”-r” which enables recursive subdir scanning when scanning for files in a directory.
  • Added command line flag ”-R” which disables recursive subdir scanning.
  • All non-options (words not starting with a hyphen) are used as JPEG files or directories and will be added to the file selection list. With this option you can easily create a SendTo link in Windows.
  • You can now configure the Windows Explorer context menu in the options dialog box. Whenever you right-click on a JPEG file or a folder you can select AvPicFaceXmpTagger from the contect menu. This feature is disabled by default.

• Release Date: 12.10.2009
• Download: AvPicFaceXmpTagger Version 1.3
• Changes:
  • The picture information display dialog box is not modal for the main window anymore. The tagging process can be only started when no picture information dialog boxes are open though.
  • A new keyword list box holding additional keyword entries is available now. These keywords can be added to the IPTC/XMP keywords during the tagging process optionally. The keyword list can be saved to or read from a simple text file.
  • Now every EXIF meta data directory has a corresponding tab entry in the tab control (i.e. the GPS or the maker notes directories.
  • If the GPS location is available in the EXIF GPS directory, this location will be displayed on Google Maps.
  • Pictures are auto-rotated due tue the EXIF orientation tags (if available).

• Release Date: 10.10.2009
• Download: AvPicFaceXmpTagger Version 1.2
• Changes:
  • A new picture information display dialog box is available. This dialog box can be opened by either double-clicking on a picture filename in the file selection list or by selecting a file and then pressing the “File Props…” button. In this dialog box you can see the Picasa/XMP face definitions, all EXIF, IPTC, XMP and JPEG tags and you can export the XMP and all other tags as a XML file.

• Release Date: 7.10.2009
• Download: AvPicFaceXmpTagger Version 1.1
• Changes:
  • Added a Changelog dialog window showing the change history. The changelog window is available under “Help”→“Changelog…”.
  • The situation where “alias” names are used in contacts.xml and picasa.ini files are handled now. The picasa.ini files might contain a ”[Contacts]” section with alias names definitions and the contacts.xml file has a ”<subject></subject>” entry then.
  • A new statistic counter showing the number of unknown faces was added. A unknown face is a face where its hash key couldn't be resolved to a person name.
  • There are now more possibilities to specify what to do with the IPTC and XMP Keyword tags: “Don't touch”, “Delete all”, “Delete persons” or “Add persons”.

• Release Date: 5.10.2009
• Download: AvPicFaceXmpTagger Version 1.0
• Changes:
  • Initial version.