Is there an EXIF tag for storing face regions in a photo?
Asked 11/11/2022
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I know EXIF has the SubjectArea tag for marking a subject’s location. Is there a standard EXIF tag specifically for faces or face regions, or is face information usually stored somewhere else in image metadata?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
3y ago
2 Answers
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The Metadata Working Group regions tag (XMP-MWG) is the defacto standard for storing face regions. This is where most modern software stores the data whether it is embedded in the file or in an XMP sidecar file. While the MWG is defunct, you can read the standard through Archive.org.
Microsoft created a region tag (XMP-MP) to work with their Windows Live Photo Gallery program. I think OneDrive uses this, but I don't think I've seen anything else use it.
The IPTC Photo Metadata Standard included a region tag (XMP-iptcExt) as part of their spec a few years ago (2019). This is still pretty recent and I haven't seen software support for this yet.
ACDSee, as they so often do, went and created they're own standard for face regions (see the author of exiftool Phil Harvey's comment on this) . It is, for the most part, a copy/paste of the MWG standard. It differs in the fact that it saves regions recognized by the ACDSee program separate from faces manually applied. ACDSee will read MWG regions and convert them to ACDSee regions.
As you can see, all of these regions are stored in XMP. That is because XMP is far more flexible than the EXIF standard is.
Originally by user37960. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user37960
3y ago
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Not really in EXIF itself. While EXIF has tags like SubjectArea, face-region data is usually stored in XMP metadata rather than a dedicated EXIF face tag.
The main de facto standard is the Metadata Working Group region schema (XMP-MWG), which many applications use for face rectangles/regions, either embedded in the file or in an XMP sidecar. There are also other schemas:
- XMP-MP: Microsoft’s region tag, mainly associated with Windows Live Photo Gallery and some Microsoft services.
- XMP-iptcExt: an IPTC region specification added more recently, with limited support so far.
- Some software has used proprietary formats as well.
So if you’re looking for interoperable face-region metadata, check XMP region tags first—especially XMP-MWG—rather than expecting a dedicated EXIF face tag.
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