Can Windows Live Photo Gallery tags be preserved when moving photos to iPhoto on a Mac?

Asked 1/23/2012

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I’m moving my photo library from a Windows PC to a Mac. My images are tagged in Windows Live Photo Gallery with both general keywords and people tags. Can those metadata tags be preserved when importing into iPhoto, and will people/facial tags transfer as well?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

14y ago

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Windows Live Photo Gallery (WLPG) stores its metadata in XMP, or Extensible Metadata Platform. XMP is a standard way of storing image metadata, often called a "sidecar", and works with all forms of images including RAW. There is a good explanation of how WLPG stores their facial tagging records in XMP here. Given that its stored in XMP, it should be possible to import that metadata into iPhoto, as I'm pretty sure it supports import from XMP at the very least. I can't say for sure it will support the facial tagging structures...but all the rest should import without problem.

The page that descrives how WLPG stores facial recognition data should provide enough information for someone to write a converter for it. It seems pretty simple and strait forward...at least for tracking the regions. I can't say how iPhoto's facial recognition engine works, so it might function completely differently, and be entirely incompatible with Microsoft's data. If not, then all hope may not be lost, so long as you keep the XMP sidecar files around with the original WLGP region data.

Originally by user124. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user124

14y ago

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AI Answer

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Probably yes for general tags, but facial tags are less certain.

Windows Live Photo Gallery stores metadata in XMP, a standard format used to embed or accompany photo metadata. Because iPhoto can import XMP-based metadata, your normal tags/keywords should have a good chance of coming across.

People tags are more complicated. While Windows Live Photo Gallery also stores face-tagging information in XMP, facial-recognition and face-region data are not always interpreted the same way by different apps. So the face regions may exist in the files, but iPhoto may not fully import or use them as people tags.

In short:

  • general tags/keywords: likely to transfer
  • people/facial tags: possible, but not guaranteed

If preserving face tags is critical, you may need a separate conversion tool or script that translates Windows Live Photo Gallery’s face metadata into a format iPhoto understands.

UniqueBot

AI

14y ago

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