"Find similar photos" in Photo Manager Deluxe gives ludicrous results

Andy-Trigg wrote on 5/21/2024, 6:14 AM

Hi. I'm testing a trial version, and selected a photo of myself and my wife stood side by side (full body length). I selected "find similar photos". It brought up 8 results. The first was a photo of our front door, second was a photo of my grandad gurning. The third was a photo of our daughter in wedding dress, and the rest included a washing machine, and other totally erroneous results.

As being able to tag and find photos is one of the main reasons for considering purchasing, this is a very disappointing result. Is it usually accurate? How can it possibly think our front door looks like me and my wife standing together?

Comments

emmrecs wrote on 5/21/2024, 8:47 AM

@Andy-Trigg

Welcome to the Magix user to user forums.

First, you need to be aware that ALL trial versions of Magix products are in some way limited in comparison with the full, purchased versions.

Second, I will be quite honest and say I have never attempted to use the "Find similar Photos" feature in PM. However, your results do sound very bizarre, to say the least!

Third, and perhaps most relevant, it is a source of some annoyance to several users here that PM has not been updated in any way for several years and, at the moment, there seems to be no indication that this will change, at least in the short-term.

Jeff
Forum Moderator

johnebaker wrote on 5/21/2024, 6:08 PM

@Andy-Trigg

. . . . selected a photo of myself and my wife stood side by side (full body length) . . . .

From previous experience with Photo Manager (PM), the Find Similar photos, does work reasonably well within certain constraints.

The subject being looked for in the image needs to be relatively dominant, eg for facial recognition a head and shoulder shot with little distracting background, I suspect this is why you are getting 'our front door looks like me and my wife standing together'.

I cannot test for exact sizes, PM does not work on Windows 11, at least on my PC. It appears that Microsoft have deprecated/disabled an old Windows feature that is obsolete and PM uses, the feature cannot be installed.

HTH

John EB

Andy-Trigg wrote on 5/22/2024, 5:00 AM

Thanks for the replies. I'm genuinely puzzled as to how they even have this feature if it's so poor as it's caused me to look for something better. Here are my results -

browj2 wrote on 5/22/2024, 6:23 AM

@Andy-Trigg

Hi,

As pointed out, Photo Manager is now quite old and desperately needs an update and some bugs fixed.

I have never been able to figure out what the "Find similar photos" - "find similar photos" feature actually is trying to do. It can't be doing image analysis as that would require a lot of power and some training as to what one is looking for. In the search screen, look at the options - search hard drives, database, Search for EXIF content. I suggest that you read the manual. Maybe you can figure out something that I can't see.

The manual indicates "...find similar subjects." IDK what that means.

The other options are tagging people (recognize faces) and this requires training the program. From the manual:

A different way to catalogue pictures is by using FaceID, a development of the Fraunhofer Institute. FaceID recognizes faces on photos and gradually learns recurring faces using typical features, and these are then assigned to specific people.

There is a problem with this. I already have people named under categories and they don't show up in the "persons" column of the interface - it's empty. Adding a new person with the same name will tell you that the person exists, but you can't select it.

EDIT: This is what I mean. If I add the name, it tells me that it already exists.

EDIT again: testing out the facial recognition, it seems that as you go through the photos in the above interface, it tries to id faces and suggest who is who. You accept and the category is added for that person. As far as I can tell, it does not go through folders by itself trying to find a person. It would have been nice if the manual was clear about what this actually does.

As so on.

I don't use Photo Manager for finding similar photos, mainly for cataloguing/categorizing and adding descriptions, and previewing photos, videos and audio files, and dragging them to a video editor.

All in all, I don't think that there is anything (at a reasonable price) that comes close to what PM can actually do, or at least, I wasn't able to find one. There are many that do photos, but not video and audio files.

An updated version would be appreciated.

John CB