The quest for a DAM

bastibe

Regular
Location
Germany
Name
Bastian Bechtold
So for years I've been using Digikam as my DAM. It's a fine program in many ways. But one way that's lacking is face identification. It can find faces relatively reliably, but can't recognize previously seen faces almost at all.

So when I recently tried out ACDSee, it was quite a revelation to see it pick up people's faces in mere seconds after I had identified only one or two samples manually. It's great stuff!

That got me wondering what other programs might be out there. I want a program that can browse my existing directory tree, filter by star ratings, and do face identification. If possible in a cross-application compatible way.

What DAM do you use, and what do you use it for?
 
I used iView/Media Pro until Media Pro was killed off by Phase One.
For now, I use Capture One since I already had that software as a raw processor.

Face recognition has no interest to me.
 
In my experience, the catalog functionality in Capture One is problematic when image counts get beyond about 20k.

So much so, that I abandoned catalogs and adopted sessions in C1.

This issue is more pronounced in Windows than on Macs.
 
I should probably elaborate on what I use my DAM for, which should inform what I'm looking for.

I Import my raws into daily directories, then process them in my raw developer. I export into event directories and big, yearly whatever-happened-in-2023 directories. These directories I import into my DAM.

When I look for things, it's mostly in these directories, which I sort by date, and filter by rating and/or people. I don't generally tag anything else, as things are easy enough to find this way.

For a few years now, I have mostly used Digikam as my DAM. It does the job reasonably well, but I've found the face identification specifically lacking in two ways: it can't recognize known people most of the time, and it only stores face data in its own library; face information is lost when I copy a file to another computer, or share albums with other people. For the latter reason, I'd prefer things to be saved in EXIF/IPTC metadata, instead of some proprietary library.

Thus I'm looking for a replacement. ACDSee seems to work acceptably, and is tremendously effective at identifying known faces. Thanks to that, re-tagging years worth of family images took less time than tagging a single vacation did in Digikam. I'm still within the trial period, though, and haven't yet used it for "serious" work.

As you might have surmised from this text, my use case is purely for personal images. I document my family and our trips, print calendars, monthly family blog posts, and yearly photo books, but there's no commercial interest at all.

I'd be interested to hear how you organize and access your photos, and if you know a software that might be worth a look for my use case.
 
I should probably elaborate on what I use my DAM for, which should inform what I'm looking for.

I Import my raws into daily directories, then process them in my raw developer. I export into event directories and big, yearly whatever-happened-in-2023 directories. These directories I import into my DAM.

When I look for things, it's mostly in these directories, which I sort by date, and filter by rating and/or people. I don't generally tag anything else, as things are easy enough to find this way.

For a few years now, I have mostly used Digikam as my DAM. It does the job reasonably well, but I've found the face identification specifically lacking in two ways: it can't recognize known people most of the time, and it only stores face data in its own library; face information is lost when I copy a file to another computer, or share albums with other people. For the latter reason, I'd prefer things to be saved in EXIF/IPTC metadata, instead of some proprietary library.

Thus I'm looking for a replacement. ACDSee seems to work acceptably, and is tremendously effective at identifying known faces. Thanks to that, re-tagging years worth of family images took less time than tagging a single vacation did in Digikam. I'm still within the trial period, though, and haven't yet used it for "serious" work.

As you might have surmised from this text, my use case is purely for personal images. I document my family and our trips, print calendars, monthly family blog posts, and yearly photo books, but there's no commercial interest at all.

I'd be interested to hear how you organize and access your photos, and if you know a software that might be worth a look for my use case.
Adobe Bridge and keywords ...

Images uploaded into separate folders with the card name and date included.

I use original filenames with a prefix on upload; add a suffix after PP, and save to an upload folder.
 
In my experience, the catalog functionality in Capture One is problematic when image counts get beyond about 20k.

So much so, that I abandoned catalogs and adopted sessions in C1.

This issue is more pronounced in Windows than on Macs.
no fear of ever reaching that many images in a catalog :)
I use a catalog per year of per trip.

I have since the surmise of Media Pro looked at numerous alternatives but have yet to find something that suits me better than C1 currently.
 
Another Lightroom user, I haven't played with facial recognition, but thinking about it. I've tried and retried options over the years, but I haven't found a metadata browser I like as well. Finally broke down and subscribed when I finally got a camera not supported by the last perpetual license version.
 
Another Lightroom user, I haven't played with facial recognition, but thinking about it. I've tried and retried options over the years, but I haven't found a metadata browser I like as well. Finally broke down and subscribed when I finally got a camera not supported by the last perpetual license version.

Just be forwarned - if you have a lot of images and it starts building the facial database - it is (IMHO) glacially slow to run through and compare/build. Just prepare to let it sit for a while (mine was going on 2 days when I deactivated it). I will say that I have 60,000 images in the catalog - so take that into account.
 
Just be forwarned - if you have a lot of images and it starts building the facial database - it is (IMHO) glacially slow to run through and compare/build. Just prepare to let it sit for a while (mine was going on 2 days when I deactivated it). I will say that I have 60,000 images in the catalog - so take that into account.
Good to know, I'd only do it on my family catalog, I think that one is about 20k images.
 
The thing is unless you embed the ratings, names of faces recognized, etc. in the metadata in the files, it is probably going to build a database of some kind. Even if you do embed it, other software would have to extract and recognize it. So I think cross-application capability is going to be mostly a dream, though you may find some work together. An example would be something that could read a Lightroom or Capture One catalog, then that program and LR/C1 would be compatible.

I would like to find something where I would not need another license for family members to at least browse if not update a DAM catalog. Big bonus if it was open source and I could host it on my own web site. Anybody use anything like that?
 
Just be forwarned - if you have a lot of images and it starts building the facial database - it is (IMHO) glacially slow to run through and compare/build. Just prepare to let it sit for a while (mine was going on 2 days when I deactivated it). I will say that I have 60,000 images in the catalog - so take that into account.
Gotten through about 5k in 2-3 hours. Didn't think about the fact that it would try and ID crowds at events, like the thousands at Fenway Park.
 
I use Apple photos. It has remarkably good facial recognition.
I have about 60K photos and it provides individual grouping of all my extended family and friends.
Plus there is a nice memories feature that offers up groups based upon, people, places, events, etc…
 
I use Apple photos. It has remarkably good facial recognition.
Back when I was deep in the Apple ecosystem, I used Apple Photos as well. Back then I had some 20 GB worth of photos, which Apple Photos managed to save as a 60 GB photo library. Luckily there was a third party program that automatically generated a new library with the same structure and imported all the images to it, thereby magically clearing up the wasted space.

On my grandfather's computer, we migrated his Apple Photos library from an older computer to a newer one, which seemed to work fine, but later found out that only the image thumbnails were actually integrated. Once you double clicked a photo, it only showed a black file. Luckily the images were still on the old computer when we found out.

And then there was the farcical ordeal we had to go through to get more than thumbnail-sized photos off the iPhone of a friend after a vacation (send iCloud link, create apple account, import the link in the web interface, find the advanced download dialog, only there you'll find the download link with more than 1080p resolution. Every other way produces tiny, useless files).

Suffice it to say, Apple Photos and I are not friends. But some of these experiences are a few years old, do maybe things have improved. It sure was convenient when I used it, though.
 
The thing is unless you embed the ratings, names of faces recognized, etc. in the metadata in the files, it is probably going to build a database of some kind.
It seems that ACDSee is using a standard JPEG EXIF field to save faces (if you manually "embed metadata"). Digikam is claiming to save face names and positions to EXIF, but as far as I can tell, it doesn't actually do so - but writes names into the tags.
 
Back when I was deep in the Apple ecosystem, I used Apple Photos as well. Back then I had some 20 GB worth of photos, which Apple Photos managed to save as a 60 GB photo library. Luckily there was a third party program that automatically generated a new library with the same structure and imported all the images to it, thereby magically clearing up the wasted space.

On my grandfather's computer, we migrated his Apple Photos library from an older computer to a newer one, which seemed to work fine, but later found out that only the image thumbnails were actually integrated. Once you double clicked a photo, it only showed a black file. Luckily the images were still on the old computer when we found out.

And then there was the farcical ordeal we had to go through to get more than thumbnail-sized photos off the iPhone of a friend after a vacation (send iCloud link, create apple account, import the link in the web interface, find the advanced download dialog, only there you'll find the download link with more than 1080p resolution. Every other way produces tiny, useless files).

Suffice it to say, Apple Photos and I are not friends. But some of these experiences are a few years old, do maybe things have improved. It sure was convenient when I used it, though.
Interesting and seems like that was quite frustrating. Personally the only issue was going from iPhoto to Aperture then to Apples Photos generated more than a few duplicate images. But a fairly recent (2021-22?) upgrade to Apple Photos added a find duplicates and merge feature.
 
Back
Top