Oh boy! I was never one to keyword my images. Then, it was too late because I had way too many images. The possibility of getting it done was close to impossible. But wait! Turns out there is software that will give you a huge head start on the process.
Enter Excire Foto 2024. The folks of Excire gave me a copy of their software to run it through its paces.
Pros
- Take an entire collection of images and add keywords!
- Makes it easier to find an image
- Search by phrase
- Find specific people images by facial recognition
- Find images by lens, aperture or field of view
Cons
- As with all software you need to spend time learning (I guess not really a con?)
- Have to remember to ingest new images into the database
Excire Foto 2024 — Features
Here’s what Excire Foto says:
- Prompt-Search AI: Instantly find any image in your catalog by typing in a free-text description.
- Intelligent Aesthetic Analysis: Let AI identify your most visually appealing shots.
- Auto-Keywording: Say goodbye to manual keywording; Excire’s X-tags AI will automatically categorize your images with precise keywords.
- Advanced Duplicate Management: Clean up your library and speed up your culling process by effectively identifying duplicates, near-duplicates, and image sequences.
- Facial Recognition: Easily search your image catalog for specific people and facial characteristics.
- Integrated AI Analytics: Dive deeper into your photography habits and gain insights that can save you money and shape your next masterpiece.
Excire Foto 2024 — System requirements
Processor
Multi-core processor with 64-bit and AVX support Older AMD Prozessoren like AMD Phenom ™ II X6 1100T und AMD Phenom ™ II X (also known as AMD Athlon II X4 640) are not supported. Intel Core 2 Duo processors are not supported.
Operating system
macOS 10.14 (or newer) or Windows 10 (64-bit) or Windows 11 (64bit)
Memory
Minimum 8GB RAM. However, 16GB or more are recommended.
Hard disk
The Excire Foto databases will take up approx. 250MB for 100,000 photos, and the previews approx. 25GB if highest-quality previews are generated for each photo.
Excire Foto 2024 — Monumental job done quick
Having hundreds of thousands of photos made this a task I thought would never happen. Adding keywords to my files to aid in finding them when I needed them looked like it was out of the realm of possibility. Excire Foto made short work of the process. Okay… Maybe it took about 24 hours to keyword 248,000 images. Fired up one section of my hard drive and ran it overnight. Then ran another set of files the next night and then it was done.
Excire Foto 2024 — Accuracy
You might think that the AI process would lead to a lot of inaccuracies. Not so much. I’m still testing but I’m finding about 95% to be pretty much on target. One exception, for me, is the software labeled all my Sandhill Crane images as “goose.” That will be an easy adjustment using the ‘Find Similar’ command and making changes to the keywords.
Excire Foto 2024 — Process
Download and install the Excite Foto software, fire it up and get it registered. Add a folder add or register folders including subfolders you should activate this option. The selected directory tree will now be recursively searched for photos. If this option is enabled, once the photos are registered, they will also be automatically analyzed and the corresponding keywords will be saved in Excire Foto. Note that Excire makes its own database and makes no changes to your files.
Excire Foto 2024 — Using AI Training
Meanwhile, this was a different way to look at images. You have many choices of how to sort the files. Name, capture date, star rating relevance, recently added or, a new one to me Aesthetics. The software was trained to choose the best renditions of your images. Now this is totally subjective in the world but it is interesting to see the images it chooses as the most aesthetic.
Excire Foto 2024 — Final thoughts
If you are a photographer who never quite gets around to organizing his/her files with keywords, this software is for you. This is especially true if you have a large collection of images. It worked to add keywords to my quarter of a million files in a quite reasonable time of less than 24 hours. It would have taken me years to even get close and I wouldn’t have done as good a job.
Excire Foto 2024 software offers many ways to query and find files. It returns search results very quickly! I’m still learning how to use the data received in order to create charts of camera and lens use to learn about my preferences and more.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
