#BACKUP PICASA PHOTOS SOFTWARE#

(I'm keeping this separate from my normal 'Names Persons' field until I do more testing.) I created the field as a global field, with the critical part being the Exiftool field: regionname. I instead created a new 'Picasa Named Persons' field. But then I recalled that ResourceSpace handles exif data well, so I didn't need to do that. I first used Exiftool to export the data into a spreadsheet, so that I could copy that into a CSV uploader spreadsheet. I then wanted to get that face tagging information from Picasa into ResourceSpace. RegionName>PersonInImage works the way you expect, with 'Region Name' as the column title and the names from each photo as a comma separated list inside a single cell in the column.)įor that reason, I decided to focus on the RegionName>PersonInImage and ignore the other field, but I'm just mentioning that the other field exists in case any of the other metadata enthusiasts out there need to know. It exports the names in each photo with tabs between them, thus making a mess of your CSV. If you use those tags to export the data to a CSV, for example, the RegionName>PersonDisplayName doesn't work well. If you use Exiftool to view the face names metadata, you'll see that it's in both exif tags RegionName>PersonDisplayName and RegionName>PersonInImage. (The names are actually stored in two fields, but I found that exporting the names from one of the fields was problematic. The trick with Picasa's face tagging with this XMP extensions is that if you open the file in Adobe Bridge or Photoshop, and look at the file info, you won't see the metadata field where the names are stored.

#BACKUP PICASA PHOTOS SOFTWARE#

And if you want more details on how Picasa face tagging works, this freeware software has a useful explanation. The face names are stored in the Microsoft XMP Namespace Photo Region Schema, which is an XMP extension. Be forewarned that there are grumblings on message boards about corrupted backups, so don't put all your proverbial eggs in this basket also make sure your hard drive where Picasa stores data locally is being backed up.)

The first backup takes a while, but subsequent backups using that same backup set are faster. Name your backup set something useful in Box 1, then choose 'Select All' in box 2, then select 'Backup'. In the Picasa Library view, use Tools>Backup Pictures. (After doing that, this is a good opportunity to backup your Picasa data. You *must* use the 'Write Faces to XMP' method to embed the names in the photo metadata.

If you do not do this step, the names are only stored in the picasa.ini file that resides in each folder with the images. In the dialog box, I choose 'Write Faces' or 'Write All'. Once I tag a group of photos, I use Tools>Experimental>Write Faces to XMP. I also use the caption field in Picasa to record captions for each photo. I want to identify as many people in the images as possible, and I'm taking advantage of Picasa to do face tagging. Our museum just had its re-opening after a major renovation, and this resulted in an avalanche of events photography. Secondly, this requires that you have Exiftool ( ) installed with ResourceSpace. (See the end for more details on Picasa face tagging, XMP, and other issues.) My first caveat is that this has only been tested with jpegs so far. I discuss technical issues (and workarounds), tools, and metadata. tl dr: I explain how I tag faces in Picasa and then extract that information in ResourceSpace. This is a long one, but I'm providing a lot of detail so others can try this out.

Backup picasa photos