Migrate Picasa Face Tags to Lightroom Metadata

It's been on my list for a while now, and I finally got around to searching for and trying out a few methods to migrate Picasa face tags to Lightroom Metadata.  I really like the capability of Picasa in it's ability to tag faces, and as my collection of images gets ever larger this feature will become more and more important in my work flow I think.  The limitation always was that you couldn't use this information in any other program, without painstaking manual work with keywords.

One major use I have for it is determining all the photos where one (but especially two or more people) appear.  This is very useful for prints, photo books, or just tracking down those photos you forgot you had.

The first option I've found to help migrate Picasa Face Tags into images directly is with AvPicFaceXmpTagger.  The summary below (from its wiki pages) gives an idea of what it does.Click on the title for the creators website/download.

The program seems to work with DNG files as well, from the tests I've done on it.  As always, back-up your data and catalogue before trying "new" things like this.

The next tool I'm looking into for this process is Jeffery Friedl's "Picasa Face-Recognition Import” Lightroom Plugin which seems to do much the same thing, but with a bit different final results.

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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. Luckily 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 (contacts). 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).

Get The Most Out of Your Canon PowerShot

A while back I discovered that in many Canon digital camera models, a fairly easy hack to be added (through the memory card, so it's non destructive) which gives you a bunch of added functionality to your camera.   Enhanced Image Capture, Additional Information On-Screen, and Additional Photographic Settings are a few of the major changes you can make to your camera.

The site to check out is the CHDK Wiki dedicated to all this stuff.  Lots of information on that site, but first thing to do is check your model number and firmware version to see if your camera is supported.

With this add-on I was able to create a time lapse movie last year of my trip through the Rockies from Revelstoke to Calgary.

A bunch of other mini-programs can be downloaded and used from the site mentioned above - like time lapse, motion detection and advanced bracketing.  So if you have an old Canon PowerShot lying around, give it a try!

Another interesting article over at Lifehacker about getting the most out of any point and shoot camera found here.  And a more extensive overview of enhancing your camera through CHDK here.

Google Trends & Microstock

I'm often curious to see trends on Google Trends, and also curious to see what I can gather from this site to better position my photography focus in future shots.  Hunting around for some various terms I came across some interesting comparisons.

General Market

Getty vs Corbis vs Microstock - Corbis seems to have been overtaken in this metric by istock around mid 2007.

Getty (red) vs Corbis (purple) vs Microstock (blue:istock, green: shutterstock, yellow: Fotolia)

Microstock Battle - istock seems to be declining slightly since the end of 2008, Fotolia seems to have a continuing upward trend, while Shutterstock seems to have had a plateau in 2009, with a spike in searches at the beginning of 2010.

Microstock Trends (blue: iStock, yellow: Fotolia , red: Shutterstock , green: Dreamstime, purple: 123rf)

Some Other Interesting Photo Topics:

Royalty Free versus Creative Commons
Film versus digital
Selling Photos versus Buying Photos

The searches above aren't exact by any means, but an interesting exercise none the less to gather a snap shot on topics.  Something to keep an eye on for ideas and research.

Microstock Statistics :: iStockphoto

I came across an interesting site the other day:

iStockcharts

This site seems to aggregate many of the statistics from every contributor to iStockphoto and display it in tabular form.  The data is sortable using the various headings (below) at the top of each page. 

• Contributor
• Total DLs
• # of Files
• Market Share of Files
• New Files in last 30 Days
• # of Reviews
• Reviews per File
• Member since

Product Review: Royaltek RGM-3800 Geologger

I got this product almost a year ago in preparation for a long trip to South America. I looked into several options at the time, and this one had a good price point and the capacity that I needed for a trip lasting over two months.

The Royaltek RGM-3800 has space for 650,000 data points when recording standard information (Longitude & Latitude) with capacity decreasing when you add elevation, velocity, etc. Logging in this manner allows for 180 days of recording, 12 hours a day.

The one drawback to this particular device and most others of its size is the limited battery life. On two AAAs the battery lasts between 6-8 hours, so when outdoors or in remote places it limits the usefulness or makes you bring along a ton of extra batteries.

I got around this by using an external battery (Digipower shown) (connected by the USB port) which added a lot more capacity. [On the technical side, two AAAs usually have around 900mAh, and the Digipower device has 3400mAh, giving approximately 4X longer life.] With this battery pack, I got about 3-4 days use out of it between charges.

The log files are stored in the .nmea format, compatible with many geotagging programs, but I've found a useful program for converting .nmea files to KMZ/KML (Google Earth) or GPX if you need to convert to different formats.

Overall a great product I’d recommend for anyone interested in Geotagging their photos on a long or short trip.

Alamy Upsize Tool

I’ve recently started using Alamy for an avenue of image sales. One of their requirements is that the image must be over 48Mb uncompressed. At first I was a little confused as to what that means for the actual image size and the resulting dimensions that are required. After finding some info on the web with formulas, etc. I came up with this spreadsheet that allows you to easily figure out how big your new files has be to get the right size file. Simply enter in your original image dimensions, desired final uncompressed file size, and the resulting new image dimensions appear in the cells below. Try it out below.



This information is all I need to enter into many resizing software programs in order the get the right file size every time.