How do I classify pictures and images stored on my homeserver?

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OrlyP

Member
May 16, 2023
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I must have collected thousands upon thousands of pictures on my server. I started off putting them in folders named upon dates they were taken. But later I got lazy and just started dumping pictures under a catch-all folder.

Is there a software that runs on Windows that can help me classify these pictures? Ideally, is there an AI solution that can recognize images on those pictures, pretty much how you can search on Google Photos?

For example, I can put "dog" as a search string and the resulting output would show me all pictures in my collection with a dog in it, regardless of when or how it was taken.

Thanks!
 

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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Yes, there are I've seen them suggested here and reddit but I'm sorry I don't recall... bumping this for you, someone knows :)
 
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oneplane

Well-Known Member
Jul 23, 2021
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I'm not aware of any windows or linux software with sufficient training to do this in a useful manner. I know Apple's Photos app can do it (offline but also online if you wish), and Google's online-only software can do it too.

The problem isn't as much getting an initial detection and feature extraction system going, but it's the constant maintenance and high-cost machine learning model training that makes the FOSS part really hard, which is where most of the offline and non-Google systems come from.
 
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OrlyP

Member
May 16, 2023
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No personal experience, but maybe this snippet from a chat with a friend help generate leads?
View attachment 29749
After I wrote my post, I actually stumbled upon this Photoprism. The setup (container) is a little beyond me as my knowledge ends on the concept of virtual machines and virtual networks. lol But it's not like I am not trying. I realize that if I can't get it up and running, at least the skills I gain will be invaluable.... Or so I hope.

So far, I've setup a Debian VM in Hyper-V and after modifying the YAML file they provided, ran docker compose. It was a joy to see everything being spun up before your eyes.... easy enough so far. I was able to get Photoprism up and even accessible from a web browser. At this point, I was literally groping around the UI. I eventually found the Upload section and I gave it a folder of pictures to ingest (approx. 400+ pics). I left it indexing overnight.

When I checked on it the next morning, I find that Debian had rebooted and that Photoprism is no longer accessible from the web. I'm now stuck and don't know how to proceed. But I'll definitely look up how to restart Photoprism later when I get off work.

I'm a Windows guy through and through and these newfangled containers befuddles me to no end. If anyone here has an idea how I might proceed, I'll be very grateful for any help
 
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rubylaser

Active Member
Jan 4, 2013
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Michigan, USA
First, verify if it's running.
Code:
docker ps -a
If nothing is running, which is very likely, you will want to edit the docker-compose.yml. Change into the directory that contains your docker-compose.yml and edit it. You will want to uncomment the restart line under the photoprism service (remove the #) and save.
Code:
  photoprism:
    # restart: unless-stopped
This will ensure that the container will restart after a reboot, unless you had it shutdown prior to rebooting. Finally, run docker compose in daemon mode.
Code:
docker compose up -d
 
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oneplane

Well-Known Member
Jul 23, 2021
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Picasa is dead, ExifTool is like the name suggest, a metadata management tool. Neither are AI-powered and neither will be a solution to this problem.