Tagging and Searching files from popup dialog options

Hello all,

I'm in need of a little (okay, a lot of) assistance.

I'm working on organizing family photos in which I want to add the people in the photos to the Extended Properties: Tags (column: General -> Tags) or any column that you think might be a better choice. The thing is, I don't want to have to keep typing in people's names (time and consistency reasons).

When I select an image(s) and click a button, I'd like for a popup to open with what I'm hoping for 2 sets of groups. 1st group being a list of all Last names and the 2nd group being a list of First names. Picking a Last name does not affect the 2nd group. I would just like Last names separated from First names (written to meta Tag in no particular order).

Names that are check-marked are then added to the Tags of all the selected images after the OK button is pressed (Last1; Last2; First1; First2; First3; First4; etc).

Would also be great if the popup dialogs could be larger in size.

If the button is pressed again, it would be nice if it cleared all previously set Tags. Or better yet, if a tag is the same, it won't write it a second time (which seems to be how "SetAttr" works anyway).

A second button would also be very handy that gave the same list of check boxes that would then search for all names that are selected from the popup dialog and display the find results in a collection. This list doesn't need to auto populate from the first dialog. I'd expect it to be manually manipulated to make the choices the same.

Is this doable in Dopus? If so, anyone care to help a non-programmer out :slight_smile: I've been playing with the sample dialog boxes and list options but don't know enough to get past the samples. Can't even figure out how to make the box bigger :frowning:

Thanks for reading and considering!

Did you look into a dedicated face recognition software? Google Picasa does a good job recognizing and identifiying people.
You don't need to connect it to an online account, so privacy is given. I excluded Picasa from internet access nonetheless.
Doing such a thing in full manual mode is a real hardcore job. o) Unfortunately Picasa has an arkward UI and the tags/faces it stores, may not be directly searchable with DO, but there is "ExtendedExif" a set of script columns for DO, that allows to search through these faces, it's not the fastest solution but works. And if you have a really massive load of pictures, you should consider something else than Picasa, it stopped working for me, once the number of indexed images reached around 60k.

Getting DO dialogs bigger, can only be done by adding more controls to it, as far as this makes sense of course.
You also might check the Tagger script-addin that Kundal did, you find it in the scripts and add-in section, it may help already to accomplish what you are trying.

Hi tbone,

I did think of using a dedicated software program. Even tried a few. I'm just not happy with a few things that indexing programs usually come with.

First, they usually store their info in their own database so I'm tied to using their program. I much prefer staying in my own folder organization on the harddrive and finding them in dopus. I can not stand media library indexing software for music as well. I much prefer my own folder structure and searching in dopus over sorting by indexed info.

Second, I was worried about how the info was stored and if I could search it in dopus. Does the software actually store the tags in the picture itself or it's own database. Sounds like Picasa might be ok.

Third, this is going to be an on-going process. As they are scanned in, they'll get tagged. Plus the ranges of ages is from baby to ancient, so facial recognition really isn't needed or might not even work for a lot of them.

Fourth, 2 people might be working on this and I'm not sure how other software would work with "sharing" it's database. If we both had Picasa installed, can it's database be shared. Stuff I didn't want to work around. Dopus buttons/scripts I can easily put on both installs.

I was just hoping for something easy to add meta info to the actual image. That way if the picture goes to a family member, the info is still tagged for them. Not just in my own indexing program. Trying hard to stay way from a media indexing program if at all possible.

I looked at Tagger by Kundal before posting. I don't believe it's something that would work for me. Understanding or modifying someone elses script, even though it might be half of what I already need, is something I just can not do. I have zero knowledge in programming code to make the necessary changs.

Thanks for your input and taking the time to post! :slight_smile:

Picasa in recent version stores the facial information into the pictures as well - into some XMP tag or what it was called. You might need to enable that first though, don't know exactly currently. Different ages of human beings is not a problem for face recognition software, it's not been problematic for the babys and grandpas in my collection at least. o) How all this works out for two or more Picasa installs and how they interfere or cooperate, is something I unfortunately don't know. I did not spent too much time with face recognition and dedicated tools, I used Picasa just for that purpose as I also don't like special indexing/library software in general, but this is really something a specialized tool comes in handy.

I found daminion.net. Yes, it is a media asset manager with a database. But it's designed to work with teams of people. Plus, all tags are saved with the file and not just in it's own database (big plus for me). Another cool feature I like is that you can export the original file or have it auto convert images without touching the original. Great for sending small copies to family via email. It can also keep the imported file in it's original location, move or copy it to it's own folder structure that you can make up. Default sorts by date.

All stuff I really didn't want to do. But I feel it's made in such a nice way, it might just work out for us for family photos. Though it does cost a little bit for the networked version. The free version is standalone and holds up to 15,000 assets.

I guess this topic could be moved to the coffee shop if admins like. For now, I'm going to spend a few weeks playing around with Daminion.

If someone already start programming something, I'd still be happy with this kind of solution for other projects or if Daminion doesn't work out for us. Id feel bad if I wasted anyone's time!

Thanks

Looks very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

Regards, AB

I am one of the Daminion developers and just stumbled upon to this thread. Would love to answer any questions you might have about Daminion here on Opus forum on our forum. BTW Daminion can import Picasa faces.