Question Multi persons photo tagging (like flickr)

Hi,

My first post here, so a quick presentation : I've been using PGV for 4 years now and I'm playing with webtrees and reading your forum since a couple of days. I didn't intended using something else than PGV, but what you're doing and putting in place is quite impressive ! Good luck to the devs !

My request now: The one thing I miss is the ability to tag the different persons on a photo, like flickr or myheritage.com. For instance in group photo or wedding photo, this will permit:
* to avoid the lengthy description to explain who is who
* to go directly to the individual page of the person we click on

Is this a feature that could be implemented in future release of webtrees ?

PS: I have nearly zero coding skills !

Thanks,
KC

Kay
This has been previously discussed and, as the entire media handling mechanism is still in need of rewriting and we have no current programmers who are particularly media oriented (save Brian's introduction of the Album module), its unlikely that this is on anyone's agenda. (Same discussion as PGV's). If this project attracts some other developers, and specifically those who specialize in media management, I would suppose this will sit on a back burner. Frankly, there are few instances where there are large groups of people displayed and media management already handles creating quick links to each of those shown via the Brian's navigator functions.

Just a point of proper genealogical construction, relying on a 'tagging' mechanism to obviate the need for adequate text descriptions of those participating is not good practice. Remember that only the text entered into GEDCOM-compliant fields is saved in your portable GEDCOM and not including a note describing the participants leaves your information incomplete for future researchers.

Kay

I'd like to explore one of your comments further:

* to go directly to the individual page of the person we click on

Can you explain more what this means. It has m wondering if you are not using the ability to link multiple people to the same image fully, especially the "Manage media links" which allows them all to be linked at one time - or I might just be misunderstanding ;-(

Sounds like he means to click on the image of the person.

I encountered one online site which had software that would detect all the faces in an image and put a box on each. The "owner" could click a box, then identify the person. After saving the identifications, it would create an image map so the a hover would pop up the name and a click would go to the person's profile.

It would be a fun feature to attract people, but it wouldn't really help with entering/maintaining data.

This is exactly want I meant WGroleau, well I didn't thought of automated face recognition, but that would be fun indeed.
But ToyGuy aptly reminds me that the lengthy description to explain who is who remains mandatory so it is GEDCOM-compliant.

Maybe could such a feature be built on top of a standard field? That is the photo description could be stored in a Note with a special keyword and syntax (coordinates, name, id) , that will be parsed by webtrees? my 0.02 cents...

This said, I know this is not a fundamental feature, but a fun one, and I understand very well this is not a priority !

@kiwi: I didn't knew the "Manage media links", I made all my links one by one... ;-( Thanks anyway, this will still be useful !

KC

Wes
I for one, had no question about the feature function Kay was requesting, as its 'all the rage' in flicker, facebook and elsewhere. iPhoto too does a great job of facial recognition for linking and identity.

Your closing statement sums up my concern - that some would rather use this feature instead of entering proper documentation. As a plus-feature, OK, it might be nice as a 'built-in navigator', but if the written records fails to record the details, the truth may be lost for posterity. JMHO.

ToyGuy wrote:

Your closing statement sums up my concern - that some would rather use this feature instead of entering proper documentation. As a plus-feature, OK, it might be nice as a 'built-in navigator', but if the written records fails to record the details, the truth may be lost for posterity. JMHO.

I'm in total agreement with Stephen on this one. We should not forget the basic purpose of webtrees is genealogy, NOT social-networking.
BUT, thats not to say the idea doesn't have plenty of merit.

If someone can come up with a way to "tag" photos WITH NAMES THAT HAVE ALREADY BEEN 'PROPERLY' LINKED TO THE IMAGE then I would be very keen to see it in use. Who knows, it might even be possible to code the "manage media links" feature to do this.

But unless there is someone VERY keen on this and willing to write the code, I don't see it getting on our agenda for a long time. Even in the media area there is some much more important, quite major, re-designing required long before this sort of thing should be contemplated.

There's a feature request in PGV for this - with references to a JS library that lets you tags images in this way, storing the data in the JPEG header fields.

The technology is there and could be implemented reasonably easily. But, as with PGV, there are more feature requests than developer time available.

At the moment, I create a second copy of the image, and use photshop/etc. to add in labels and arrows.

Perahps someone could track down this library, and raise a feature request somewhere.

It won't be a high priority, but it deserves to be on the list....

This thread constitutes a feature request, doesn't it?

Unless someone else does it first, I'll look up that reference and post it when I get time. (I now have net access at home again)

I wonder though--showing a photo with image map hyperlinking and showing it in the fancy viewer might be mutually exclusive.

However, in view of the concerns about DATA (which I agree with even if I wasn't clear on that), here is how I would be inclined to design it:

1. On the form for linking the media to a person (inverselink.php?mediaid=____&linkto=person), add the image mapping feature below the individual ID entry.

2. Add text stating that the image map part is optional, but telling how to do it.

3. The hyperlink URI for the mapping should be generated from the individual ID input, not from some new input field. Saving the link should always do what the current link does to the GEDCOM data, whether or not the image "tagging" is done. In other words, you can do what you do now, or do that AND the image mapping, but not the image mapping only.

4. If an image map is generated, it can be stored in some table keyed to the media ID. A custom field could be added to the OBJE to indicate that one exists. This would be treated as other custom fields on export/import/download/upload.

5. If the media object is changed (new photo uploaded), the image map should be deleted.

6. A separate utility could list the INDIs currently linked to the OBJE, and allow mapping any or all of them into the image, but not new ones. This would be to replace the image map after replacing the photo. It could be used as an alternative to the above, i.e., instead of changing the link form, make "map link on photo" a separate step that can only be done with links already established.

Now that I think of it, that alternative is just as easy to use, and simpler. Plus it would encourage people to do all of their links first before mapping any of them.

Wes
Take a look at ImgTag JS
codecanyon.net/item/imgtag-easy-photo-tagging/116536

I think this is what they had in mind. Not sure if//how this could be tied back to direct links to INDIs, but perhaps.

Apparently he's still modifying the script to accommodate flexibility we may need. See this discussion:

I like this script, but without the ability to add the tags without having to manipulate the code it is useless to me. You should try adding the jQuery plug-in that allows you to select a portion of an image.

Also even though the fading effect is nice it is useless.
Posted 10 days ago
Author

Default-user omarabidreplied

This script is for bloggers/webmasters who just want to tag their photos (themselves). I’m doing improvement to the script and will add the feature soon. Thanks for the plugin suggestion.

From the features list, it sounds perfect. "Customizable" suggests minor modifications to make it do what we might want.

But then,

1. I read the comments, and it is obviously not as good as the front page hype makes it seem.

2. Have to pay seven dollars to get it, so I doubt the author would permit an open source license on it.

I'd be willing to pay some to have him make a custom version to meet webtrees requirements, i.e., whatever requirements the developers could come to agreement on. I'd be willing to help formalize such requirements as with the help guidelines. BUT, the amount I'd be able to pay would probably not be enough for the guy to do it.

I could write something that would do the job, but it would take me a long time to finish, as I would have to only do a little bit each day.

And that time is better spent finishing the Spanish translation. Besides, there's probably a dozen such packages available, including some open source. Just have to find them.

Hi, I found that one www.fotonotes.net . It is exactly what I had in mind and open source, but not updated since 2006 :-(

If anyone really feels they MUST work on this (I hope not) at least use this one:

www.bennadel.com/projects/jquery-photo-tagger.htm

Its JQuery, so should fit better with our other growing list of JQuery solutions.

AND MAKE SURE ITS AN OPTION. Those of use who DON'T want it need to be able to turn it off!

Can it PLEASE be done as an Add-on rather than a part of standard code - at least until someone is willing to re-write the entire media handling area of webtrees (probably the buggiest area we have left from PGV). That way only the creator has to take responsibility for maintaining it, not the over-worked dev team.

Kay
Yes and No. This does not appear to offer any of the HTML-linking that you previously mentioned. Perhaps, since O/S, Wes may be able to adapt it to something, but I can't imagine it will be soon as we still all have a lot to do.

ToyGuy, the link could be inside the note. As it is a simple span tag, it can contain a link. I downloaded the archive, added a link in the note of the file "test_dog.html", and it worked. So I could be very satisfied with that solution.

But as I said previously, I'm not a developer, so I cannot say what is the best for webtrees (fotonotes, JQuery etc.). This part is up to the Dev Team Fotonotes just fits the requirements from a user point of view

If I were to tackle it, it would definitely be a module, and design would be based on requirements agreed to by a reasonable number of the main developers. Not saying I wouldn't "bend" requirements if it allowed using some already written code, but I definitely don't want to grab something that's "cool" and then catch all the complaints because it isn't quite what people want.

And I have to repeat that I can't put a lot of time into it--this month for sure, NO time.