Copy Windows Photo Gallery face tags to Google Picasa
Windows Photo Gallery (formerly Windows Live Photo Gallery) writes facial recognition tags (people tags) directly to image file meta-data. Google Picasa until version 3.9 was storing face tags to its own internal database and configuration files. This made it tricky to synchronise face tags between different computers and makes it very easy to loose face tags while re-installing software, moving images, etc.
Since version 3.9 Google Picasa has an option to write facial recognition tags to image meta-data. For some reason this option is disabled by default, it can be enabled in Tools > Options > Name Tags > Store name tags in photo.
This setting only affect images tagged from when the setting was enabled. If you want to transfer existing Picasa face tags stored in internal database to image meta-data you can do following:
- Make sure Store name tags in photo option is enabled.
- Just in case backup your photos.
- If you have a small number of photos, simply make an edit to a photo (Fill Light slider works fine). Save the changes (File > Save), and then undo the edit.
- If you have large number of photos, you can move all face tags to a new person and then move them back to the original person. This needs to be done for every person, but if you have large number of photos it's still more efficient than editing every single photo.
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