Summary

Your photos are more than only pictures. It can yell you not only when and where the photo was taken. It can also tell you what was on the photo and what was the most prominent color. And if your photos contain any faces, it can tell you more about each face (like gender, age, emotion, hair color, etc.). But there is more... If you have a photo from your friends or family, it can also tell you who is on the photo.

To apply this information to your photos, your photos must first be analyzed. You can either select a single photo or a complete folder from your photo library, or you can use the camera of your device to take a photo. Note that the original photo will be untouched. To analyze a photo, you need an internet connection and it takes a few seconds to analyze a single photo. Once the photo has been analyzed, the photo with all the generated tags, description, color information, faces, persons and location will be added to your collection and shown in a new page.

To use face identification, you must first create a list of persons, and for each person you must give it a name and assign a couple of known photos of that person's face. If you want you can also get a person name and face from your contacts. When you're ready, you must train the app. Hereafter the app is ready for face identification. Now, when you analyze a new photo with faces on it, it tries to identify each face to match one of the persons you created.

To analyze a complete folder, the photos in the folder will be analyzed in the background, so that you can continue with viewing other photos (you can see the progress in the Status page).

You can see the thumbnails of all your analyzed photos in the Collection page. In this page you can group and sort them in different ways. You can also select individual photos and remove them from your collection (but the original photo will not be removed). You can see an individual photos full screen and its metadata by tapping on it.

Because the photos in your collection are attached with metadata, you can easily search through them in different domains. You can search by time (year, month, day), locations (country, province, city), tags, descriptions, albums, colors, facial characteristics and attributes or by person names. You can combine different search domains to narrow your search results.

You can select one or more photos from your collection and export them to different document formats like Word, PowerPoint, Pdf, or Html, or you can share them with other applications.

Another way to view your photos with embedded location data is by means of a world map. Here all the countries containing photos will be highlighted. You can select a country to zoom in and to see the thumbnails and you can select a thumbnail to show the description and to zoom in even further to show it full size.

Pages

You can change pages with the Hamburger menu in the upper left corner. Most pages contain additional help on the labels. By tapping on them you can expand or collapse them to see more detail.

🔦 Analyze Page

This page allows you to start analyzing one or multiple photos from your device or from your device's camera. After each analysis, a thumbnail and metadata (like description, tags, etc.)  is generated and stored on your device, so you can display, search, group, sort or export them later on.

You will be alerted when there are some potential troubles (like the lack of an internet connection).

 Paste x photos from Clipboard (only available when there are photos copied on the clipboard): This will analyze the photos on the clipboard. You need an internet connection to do this and it will take a few seconds. When a single photo is available on the clipboard, the photo will be analyzed and the results are shown in the Detail page. When the clipboard contains multiple photos, the photos will be analyzed in the background and you will be directed to the Status page where you can see the progress of the analysis. The clipboard will be freed afterwards. You can get the same results in the following cases:

-      when you ‘drag and drop’ photos from e.g. File Explorer to any surface area of Smart Pictures

-      when you select ‘Smart Pictures’ as a ‘Share’ target in other applications

-      when you select ‘Smart Pictures’ in the ‘Open with’ option in File Explorer.

Pick Photo: This will let you pick a single photo from the device's file system. Then the photo will be analyzed. You need an internet connection to do this and it will take a few seconds. When finished the generated metadata will be added to your collection. Then you are directed to the Detail page, where you can see the results.

Camera   This will let you take a photo with your device's camera. The photo will be stored on your device in the folder you have specified in the Settings page. The name of the specified folder is shown in parenthesis. Then the photo will be analyzed. You need an internet connection to do this and it will take a few seconds. When finished the generated metadata will be added to your collection. Then you are directed to the Detail page, where you can see the results.

Pick Folder   This will let you pick a complete folder from the device's file system. Then all photos in the folder will be analyzed in the background and the generated metadata of all the photos are added to your collection. Then you are directed to the Status page, where you can see the progress of the analysis.

Collection Page

This page shows you the thumbnails of all or a subset of the analyzed photos. The number of visible thumbnails is displayed in brackets in the title bar. The sort mode, sort direction and group mode are also indicated in the title bar. You can swipe the page down or use the or button at the top right corner to see additional options in a new pane.

The thumbnails are sorted and grouped in a particular order. You can change the sort direction with the Ascending or Descending buttons. You can change the sort mode with the Alphabetically or 🔟 By Number of Photos buttons. You can change the group type with one of the group-type buttons. You can group by Country, Province, Year, Month or by Album. By tapping on a group header, the groups are expanded or collapsed, for easy navigating. The number of photos in each group is displayed in brackets after the group name.

You can search photos in different domains like Addresses, Tags, Time, Persons, Faces, Albums, Colors and Descriptions. The search criteria for each search domain can be specified in a separate page. After each search action, the visible photos in your collection will be reduced, so that it matches the search criteria. You can apply any subsequent search actions with different search criteria on different (or the same) domains. When any search action has been applied to the collection, a search action box will be shown to show. This box shows you the domain, the search criteria and the number of photos it accomplished. By tapping this box, you can Undo the last search action or Clear the search history (so that the entire collection will be visible). The search actions will be saved between sessions. A symbol will be shown in the title bar to indicate that you see a subset of all your photos.

 

The Show badges switch enables badge symbols be visible on each thumbnail to indicate which metadata is available. Tags, description and color information is available on all photos, but the symbol indicates that there are one or more faces available on the photo; the symbol indicates that there are one or more persons on the photo and the symbol indicates that the photo contains a location.

 

When you 'tap and hold' a single photo it will be selected or unselected. Selected photos have a checkmark and are surrounded by a colored frame. The number of selected photos is shown in the upper right corner. You can also select or unselect an entire group by 'tap and hold' on the group header or use the check-box that appears on the group-header. With one or more photos selected a new set of buttons will be displayed at the top of the page that allows you to perform different actions on the selected photos. The button selects all photos; the button clears the selection. The button will remove the selected photos from the collection (Note that the original photos will NOT be removed from the device). With the 👥 button you can identify faces on the selected photos (for example when you have modified your list of persons). Only photos with faces will be considered.

The 📎button displays a box which allows you to export selected photos to different document formats:

The Share button will share the selected photos (up to 50) to other applications that can read image files. The Create PowerPoint Slideshow, 🅆 Create Word Document, 🄿 Create Pdf Document and 🌐 Create Html Document buttons creates a document with the selected photos in the specified format and opens it in the appropriate application when the document has been created. You can choose to include the metadata in the document. For Word, Pdf and Html documents, the photos are organized using the applied group mode and description and you can choose the orientation to be portrait or landscape. A progress bar gives some indication about the length of the document creation, and you can always cancel it if you like.

By tapping on a thumbnail (when not in selection mode), you will see the detail of the photo, including all attached metadata.

Detail Page

This page shows you the detail of a photo (when tapping on a thumbnail in the Collection Page, or after a single photo has just been analyzed, but also when you tapped a thumbnail in the Map page). Photos not present anymore, because they were removed from the file system after they were imported, are shown as a symbol. You can choose to delete the photo or to load the photo to the filesystem again, but you can still see its metadata.

By tapping on the photo (outside a face rectangle) you can choose to see only the photo using the entire screen, or to see the photo with face and description overlays.

By double-tapping on the photo you can zoom-in to maximum level or zoom-out to fill the screen. With pinch zoom (or the and buttons or scroll wheel on mouse devices) you can zoom-in or out to any scale. When the photo is zoomed in, you can pan to move to any part of the photo.

When the photo is zoomed out, swiping left or right will lead you to the next or previous photo.

The Full button at the bottom of the screen fills the entire screen with the photo (no metadata, map or face info).

The Meta, Faces and Map buttons splits the screen in 2 parts, divided by a splitter: one part for the photo, the other part for the additional data next or underneath the photo. With the splitter you can change the amount of screen space for the photo with respect to the additional metadata.

Full

Shows only the photo, without additional data full screen (you can pinch-zoom or double-tap to get a larger view).

Meta

The page is split in 2 parts: one part shows the photo; the other part shows the meta data, like file name, date and time, album name, description, tags, colors, location and address. You can modify the description if you don't like the generated one.

Faces

The page is split in 2 parts: one page shows the photo; the other part shows you the faces and persons present on the photo. Each face in the photo is marked by a yellow (unselected) or red (selected) rectangle and a number. When a face was identified, the person's name is also shown.

By tapping on a face rectangle, you can select a face. The face information, like Person name, Gender, Age, Emotion, Hair color and Face attributes of the selected face is shown in the other part of the screen.

The automatic face identification isn't always perfect, so with the button you can change the matching person of the selected face from the list of known persons. You can also create a new person if you want. When the face was assigned to another person or a new one, you can choose to add the face to the list of reference faces (but you must do some additional actions in the  Persons page to train the system again). With the button you can detach a face from a person.

Map

The page is split in 2 parts: one part shows the photo; the other shows a map, where a placemark marks the location of the photo. The placemark label shows the address (when available) or the geographic location. You can change the location if you want by dragging the placemark somewhere else. Then the photo also gets a new address. In case a photo has no location, you can assign a location by tapping on a location on the map. In order to assign or to change the location you must zoom in on the map.

 Persons Page

In this page you can manage persons that will be used in face identification.

In order to do this, you must provide the app with a list of persons.

First you must enter a new person name. Then you must add 3 or more different photos of that person's face and assign it to that person. You can also add a person and one photo by selecting one from your contacts (but only after you have given permission to do so). You can always change the name later on if you like.

You can choose an existing photo from your device (the button) or you can take a new one with your device's camera (the button). When a face was detected on the photo, a face thumbnail will be added to the list of person faces. If a photo contains more faces, the largest face in the photo will be used. By tapping on a face thumbnail, it can be removed from the list of person faces. After any modification, the status changes to Modified and you must use Train persons again.

When a group of persons has been trained, you will see the status changing to Trained. Now the app is ready to use face identification on subsequent photos and, when enabled and a photo contains any faces, it tries to identify each face to any of the persons. You can remove a person, including all faces with the button. You can also modify the person name.

The usual workflow is that you first create a list of persons in the Persons and then analyze new photos in the 🔦 Analyze page, but in the Collection page it is also possible to identify faces in your collection after you have modified your persons list.

 

 Map Page

This page shows you a map, zoomed out so that all countries with photos are visible. These countries are colored light red and will be selectable. The number of countries is shown in the title bar.

When you tap on one of the selectable countries it will be selected (colored dark red) and the map will be zoomed in to that country, the thumbnails of all photos within that country will be shown on its location and the country name, including the number of photos is shown in the title bar. When you click on the country again, the map will be zoomed in so that all thumbnails will be visible. When you tap outside a country, the map will be zoomed out again so that all countries will be visible. At all times you can always manually zoom with 'pinch-zoom' or the + / - buttons.

When you tap on a thumbnail, a label with the description and tags of the photo will be shown. When you tap on the label, you will be directed to the Detail page, so you can see all its details.

Settings Page

This page allows you to set the following settings:

Skip duplicates: When enabled it will not analyze photos that have already been analyzed before. When disabled it will overwrite the existing results.

◢ Enable Cellular: When enabled, analyzing photos is also possible when your device is using a cellular internet connection. When disabled, analyzing photos is restricted to wired or Wi-Fi internet connections only.

 Camera Folder: You can choose the name of the folder where photos from the camera will be stored.

Thumbnail size: You can choose to either Small, Medium, Large or Extra Large.

 Theme: You can choose between a dark or a light theme, or use the system theme

⏲ Status Page

This page has 2 section:

App info

Version number and date.

Statistics

This section shows you the number of photos, albums, tags, countries, faces and persons in your collection.

Analysis status

Because analyzing a single photo takes a few seconds, analyzing a complete folder with the  Pick Folder  command in the Analyze page takes a while and is done in the background. This section shows you the progress of all folders to be analyzed.

Each item in the list shows you the folder name and the number of photos waiting to be analyzed. With the X button you can remove a folder from the list. When a photo in a folder has been analyzed, the photos waiting is decreased and the analyzed photo is available for viewing immediately (in the Collection page).

When all photos in the folder have been analyzed, the folder will be removed from the list automatically. When all folders have been removed, the analysis status box will also be removed.

 Help Page

This page.

 

About Page

This shows the name, date, version number, release notes, app info and contact info.

Disclaimer

Requirements

Smart Pictures is available for Windows and for Android

-      Windows 10

-      Android,

App permissions:

You need an internet connection to do the analysis and to use the map for viewing or editing a location, but not for viewing the photos.

Privacy statement

Photos will be sent to a server to do the actual analysis, but they contain no additional meta data and cannot be traced back to you.

However, to enable face identification, the person names and reference faces that you provide will be stored on the server.