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Finding an image by example (reverse search, not using metadata)

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Linwood Ferguson

Linwood Ferguson
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Joined
Jan 18, 2009
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Fort Myers, FL
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Infrequently, but often enough to be annoying, I get a request that goes like this: "Can I get a larger version of this shot".

Typically they "think" it was taken sometime last winter, but are not sure. usually it's been cropped or otherwise changed, and of course it never has any embedded metadata.

So I look for clues. These are usually sports shots, so try to find some opposing team uniform in the shot to find color, or other hints of when. Often I draw the conclusion it may not have even been one of my photos.

Yes... educate the customer, teach them to leave metadata in... all those ideas come to mind and are pointless. It is what it is.

My question is this: Are there tools which can do a reverse image search on a lightroom catalog? And be any good?

Some googling and the only thing I found is this. Interestingly the word doesn't appear here on the forum at all, so it must not be too widely used. Anyone tried it?

It has a trial version so was thinking of pulling it down and experimenting, but wondered if there are other tools people have tried, or other techniques, that do not require metadata (not one such request for me has ever been solved by looking at metadata).
 
I wonder if it is time to try facial recognition again -- has anyone heard that Adobe has done anything to improve it? I can't say I have read every release note since its release, but I cannot recall any of them saying "significant improvement in facial recognition" or similar.

I have not paid close enough to the release notes to see if Adobe has formally stated anything. However, I have noticed over the year that the facial tagging appears to be faster and more reliable. Not sure if this is because of changes Adobe has made, or because I have built up a better database of tagged individuals.

Tim
 
Does the search-by-example function work across scales? For instance, if I use a picture of a bearded man as input, will it find its understanding of the image of a bearded man at any scale in the images in my catalog, or will it find only images with one bearded man (ignoring completely face-recognition here — "bearded man" is just an example)?

Is Excire in any way customizable? User-defined fuzziness? Matches which emphasize color more and shape less? Any interaction with the AI engine? Any access to the catalog Excire creates?

I just downloaded the trial.
 
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