Software Release Updates
These updates focus on lowering the learning curve for new users, enhancing flexibility for power users, expanding global reach, improving background file-processing reliability, and deepening interoperability with industry-standard tools like Adobe Lightroom Classic and Photoshop.
1. Redesigned Suggestions/Unidentified/Saved for Later main workspace
- Clear Tasks: Added a friendly onboarding subtitle: “Double-click a face to tag individually, or name the whole cluster.”
- Explicit Action Buttons: Replaced the row of 11 flat, low key icons with clearly labeled, color-coded, styled buttons (e.g., Primary, Secondary, and Danger action styles).
- Intuitive Cluster Navigation: Shifted cluster-to-cluster controls to a prominent, centralized pager (
< Previous Cluster,Cluster X of Y,Next Cluster >) making it more obvious how to browse results. - Visual Checkbox Overlay: Added a clean checkbox overlay in the top-left corner of each face thumbnail. Users can now easily see and select exactly which faces they want to modify.
2. Dynamic Selection & Contextual Batch Actions
- Dynamic Scope Detection: Buttons automatically adapt their text and functionality based on whether you have selected items:
- No Selection: Action buttons display
[ Name Entire Cluster ]or[ Save Entire Cluster for Later ]. - Active Selection (Checkboxes ticked): Buttons dynamically update to show
[ Name Selected (N) ]or[ Save Selected (N) for Later ], clearly representing the action’s scope.
- No Selection: Action buttons display
3. Keyboard-Friendly Person Naming Dialog
- Automatic Input Focus: The text input field now automatically grabs keyboard focus the moment the dialog loads, allowing instant typing. Minimum of 3 characters are accepted before matching names begins.
- Explanatory Watermark: Textbox placeholder now clearly instructs: “Type to search or create a new person…”
- Dynamic “Create New” Card: When typing a name that is not in the system, a prominent card appears at the very top of the list:
[ + Create New Person: "Typed Name" ]. Clicking this or pressing Enter immediately registers the new person. - Grid Layout Simplification: The popup now features a clean, organized side-by-side presentation for “Recent People” and “Popular People.”
- Enter Key Support: Pressing the
Enterkey inside the textbox immediately commits and assigns the tag, saving time.
4. Multi-Window Compare (Popout Capability)
- Independent Utility Windows: Added support for independent popout windows.
- Side-by-Side Analysis: Clicking the “Popout” icon on a workspace lets users open views (like People Details) in a separate, fully functional window that can be dragged to secondary monitors while keeping the main app open on another screen.
5. Seamless Navigation & Persistence
- Inter-Tab State Persistence: Switching tabs (e.g., leaving “Unknowns” to look at “People” and then returning) now retains your exact position. The application remembers which cluster index you were working on and restores it.
- Direct “Jump To Cluster” Navigation: Added a manual text entry and dropdown jump feature in the cluster navigator, allowing users to enter a specific cluster number (e.g.,
29) and jump straight to it. - Intra-Cluster Paging: Large clusters containing hundreds of faces are now broken down into clear, numbered pages, replacing slow, infinite lists with logical browsing segments.
6. Under-the-Hood: Robust Metadata Write Failure Tracking
- Soft-Missing State & Failure Database Columns: Added detailed tracking fields in the database to remember if a background file write encountered a problem.
- Intelligent Suppression & Rescheduling: The background metadata export engine now temporarily suppresses export attempts for files marked as “failed” to avoid wasting resources.
- Auto-Retry on Change: If a user modifies the image file again or updates its sidecar file, the application detects the change, clears the failure status, and re-queues it for writing.
7. Layout & Preview Pane Resizing Consistency
- Smooth Live Resizing: Replaced standard dividers in the Unknowns, Suggestions, People Details Face, and People Details Image workspaces with a custom setup. Resizing via mouse drag is smooth and responds instantly.
- Visual Ratio Preservation: Dragging the splitter sets column widths to set ratios so that resizing the entire main application window preserves the proportion of the preview panel.
- Enforced Screen Limits: Implemented a boundary check that constrains the preview pane to at most 50% of the workspace, ensuring the main thumbnail grid is never squeezed out.
8. Expanded Global Language Support (Localization)
- Three New Languages: Complete resource files (.resx) and localized strings implemented for:
- Japanese (ja)
- Korean (ko)
- Vietnamese (vi)
- Manual Language Selection: Added a new Language picker in Settings. Users can now override the automatic system-language detection and explicitly choose from: Default (System Language), English (US), Deutsch, Français, Español, 日本語, 한국어, or Tiếng Việt. The preference is saved to the database and applied on the next application launch (users are prompted to restart after changing).
9. Advanced File & GPS Synchronization
- HEIC Orientation Correction: Fixed HEIC image proxy rotations. Face regions manually placed on HEIC photos now display in the correct positions and angles.
- GPS Coordinate Sync: Improved metadata synchronization to ensure GPS coordinates on photos stay accurately aligned with user-entered database location fields based on real user feedback.
10. Enhanced Search with Metadata, Location & Filename Wildcards
- New Metadata Search Field: Added a dedicated text box to search across a photo’s Title, Description, and Author fields simultaneously. Requires a minimum of 3 characters and supports the
*wildcard for partial matching. - New Location Search Field: Added a dedicated text box to search across City, Province/State, and Country address fields. Also requires a minimum of 3 characters and supports the
*wildcard. - Smarter Filename Search (Wildcard Support): The existing filename filter was upgraded. Users can now use the
*wildcard (e.g.,IMG_*.jpg) or search by base name (without an extension) and still match the correct files, with or without their file extension. - Search Panel Reorganization: The criteria panel was reflowed for clarity. File Name and File Type filters were moved up into the Directory group box alongside the base-folder selection, placing all file-level criteria together. Metadata and Location search fields were added below the date range, grouping text-based content searches logically.
- Read-Only Results Grid: Search results grids (both folder and list views) are now read-only, preventing accidental edits to results data. Selection checkboxes were restyled to be centered and easier to click.
- Persistent Filter State: The new Metadata and Location filters are saved and restored as part of the workspace state, so users do not lose their search criteria when navigating away and back.
11. Adobe Lightroom Classic Compatibility — Configurable XMP Sidecar Naming
- Choose Your Sidecar Convention: Added a new XMP sidecar naming convention picker in Settings. Users can now control exactly how XMP sidecar files are named when Tag That Photo writes non-destructive (sidecar) metadata:
- Auto (Recommended): Uses the legacy
filename.xmpconvention for RAW files and the modernfilename.ext.xmpconvention for everything else — the best of both worlds out of the box. - Modern: Always uses
filename.ext.xmp. - Legacy: Always uses
filename.xmp— fully compatible with Adobe Lightroom Classic, which expects this exact naming.
- Auto (Recommended): Uses the legacy
- Seamless Lightroom Workflow: Photographers who round-trip images through Adobe Lightroom Classic can now select the Legacy convention so that face tags, keywords, and location metadata written by Tag That Photo are immediately recognized by Lightroom.
- Backward-Compatible by Design: When a sidecar file already exists, Tag That Photo always preserves its existing filename, so switching conventions never creates duplicate or orphaned sidecar files. Your library stays clean.
12. Expanded Location Metadata for Broader App Compatibility
- More Apps, More Fields: Location data you enter in Tag That Photo is now written to a wider set of industry-standard metadata fields. In addition to the existing IPTC location values, the app now also writes:
- XMP-photoshop:City / State / Country — the flat location fields read by Adobe Photoshop, Bridge, and Lightroom.
- XMP-iptcCore:Location — the street-level / sub-location field used across the broader IPTC Core ecosystem.
- Write-Once, Read-Everywhere: Whether your downstream tool reads IPTC, XMP-photoshop, or XMP-iptcCore, your city, region, country, and address information now travels with the photo in a format that app understands — eliminating re-keying and keeping your library consistent everywhere you view it.
- Clears Cleanly: When you remove location data in Tag That Photo, the corresponding Photoshop and IPTC Core fields are cleared too, so stale location information never lingers in exported files.
1. Person Detail Pages (UI & Navigation Improvements)
2. Photo Viewer & Workspace Enhancements
3. Metadata Workflow Improvements
* New Metadata Engine based on ExifTool
* Benefit: Cleaner, more consistent, and portable metadata
* Non-Destructive Metadata Mode
* Benefit: Preserve original images untouched
* Duplicate images
* Benefit: Fast cleanup and ongoing data health
* Benefit: Smoother, more responsive experience
* Faster Face Detection on Multi-Core Machines
1. Last update with the fuzzy name matching was a little too aggressive in matching different names together. We have tightened that match threshold.
2. New User Guide now available via the Help menu. This new guide has easier navigation and updated content.
3. A fix to the license verification module. This issue may cause your program to inexplicably stop working. There is no worry about data loss, just an inconvenience to download this new version.
1. Google Takeout feature for importing Google image exports that optionally come with metadata.
2. International language support: French, German, Spanish user interface will load based on the Windows settings.
3. For Suggestions – under the Edit menu, a new option to Auto-assign suggestions based on metadata. The feature compares metadata for the corresponding image to find potential clues for confirming tags. The clues are determined by using fuzzy name matching with the following details:
What It Handles:
- Case differences: “john smith” → “John Smith”
- Punctuation: “O’Brien” → “OBrien”
- Partial names: “John” → “John Smith”
- Typos: “Jon Smith” → “John Smith”
- Whitespace: “John Smith ” → “John Smith”
- Limited nicknames: “Bob” → “Robert” (depends on similarity)
How It Works:
- Exact match first (fast, O(1) database lookup)
- Fuzzy fallback if no exact match (checks all people, finds best match >= 0.70 threshold)
- Logs everything for transparency
4. Change path for library folders – this is a common request and issue for folks that move photos around or are now on a different computer with a different base photo folder location.
5. Export naming conventions for face thumbnails – added option for “as is” names, or a more intelligent “last name_first name” format. The benefit is to sort family members together based on last name.
New Statistics Dashboard
• Brand new Statistics tab providing insights into your photo library
• View total photos tracked, unknown people, and faces detected
• Discover your most frequently tagged person – we will continue adding stats to this page over time and correct any discrepancies in counts you may observe
Date-Based Organization
• Date-ordered face viewing: When viewing faces for a person, they now display in image date order by default. Previously, the default order was by date scanned by the system. The other option is to view faces in order by Favorites.
• Chronological thumbnail exports: Face thumbnails export in image date order, making it easier to see the progression over time
Visual Suggestion Indicators
• New suggestion icons appear on face thumbnails in the People view, making it easy to see which people have pending suggestions at a glance
• CTRL-T or Right-click on a Person to view the suggestions
Major improvements to the Photo Viewer
• Redesigned manual face selection tool in the Photo Viewer
• New reference image display for better face tagging accuracy
• Improved manual face controls with better visual feedback
• Now suggestions will show in the Photo Viewer with option to confirm
Mini-collage View for Suggestions
• Click on a suggested person’s name to see a visual collage of up to four of their faces
• Provides more reference for the existing person when reviewing face suggestions
Enhancements:
We have added the following features:
- Suggestions – now you can “Save for Later” faces that are suggested for a person. Previously you could only save Unidentified faces. Right-click on the face to get this option.
- Suggestions – we have added two new navigation options. “Go to first” suggested person (<<) and “Go to last” suggested person (>>). This is useful where you may have hundreds of suggestions and want to continue working with the largest group.
- Unidentified – we have also added similar navigation options to the Unidentified panel so that you can go to the first (largest) cluster of similar faces (<<), or to the last cluster (>>).
- Search function – now when you type in a keyword to include or exclude in the search criteria, you can specify a wildcard keyword with an asterisk. So for example, if you had “family picnic” and “family vacation” as keywords. You can include both by typing “family*” and press Enter.
- Search function – when exporting photos, we previously would overwrite duplicate file names, but some folks said that they had different photos with the same name and didn’t want that behavior. So now we add a number to any duplicates to keep them during an export.
Tagging Utilities
Free utilities you can use as a subscriber to Tag That Photo
We have arranged for free access for all subscribers to this new web-based application for managing photo metadata. You can access the app via this URL: https://metadatafix.com/
This solution effectively replaces the need for the Face Region and HEIC copy and sync utilities described below.
Summary of Features for Metadata Fix:
- Web-Based Application: Designed for photographers, genealogists, and media professionals to manage metadata for face regions in images.
- Image Upload: Supports JPG, HEIC, TIF, and PNG formats with automatic rotation.
- Metadata Editing: Allows editing of EXIF, XMP, and IPTC metadata with essential FHMWG fields.
- AI-Powered Face Detection: Includes manual editing capabilities for enhanced accuracy.
- Auto-Save Feature: Automatically saves progress, enabling users to resume sessions after logging in.
- Export Options:
- Embed metadata directly into images.
- Create XMP sidecar files for backup or privacy.
- Convert images to JPEG while preserving metadata.
- Generate PDF reports of metadata.
- Multi-Standard Support: Compatible with MWG, Microsoft Photo, and IPTC face region formats.
Version 1.3
Face Region utility for editing face regions in individual photos.
This helps with face region clean-up and image rotation. Specifically for situations where the face regions were added and then the image was rotated. Or somehow the face regions became out of sync with the original image due to cropping or resizing. It also can generate a contact sheet PDF based on the Faces found in the image.
Here is a summary of features:
- currently supports JPEGs but we will be adding ability to work with HEIC and Webp; and we also have a Mac OS version
- it opens up the image and defaults to rotating it based on the Exif orientation
it also reads the MWG XMP face regions and places boxes on the screen - you can move the boxes around, resize them; rename them or delete them – Right-click on a box to get the menu
- you can also add new boxes via the button at the bottom or you can further rotate the image if necessary
- once you are happy with the result, you can save the image; saved images go to a sub-folder called “edited”
- also has the option to sync up MWG face regions with both MS-MP and/or IPTC face regions
- also has the option to print a PDF contact sheet for the image – showing the faces and all the metadata in a table – these reports go into a “reports” sub-folder
Run via Command line or Powershell… go to the folder where you unzipped the utility. The program needs to create a temp folder so you may need to run in Admin mode.
.\ttp-win-util.exe
Here is a video preview:
https://youtu.be/W4YEnw3UI1g
Available via this link (zip format with password ‘tagthatphoto’):
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/software.tagthatphoto.com/ttp-util-win-v1-3.zip
Version 10
HEIC copy and sync utility
With the following features:
- avoids temp JPG file creation by Tag That Photo to support HEIC scanning
- copies all pertinent metadata from the original HEIC image to JPEG during conversion
- takes as input a source folder (root of a HEIC folder – scans that folder only HEIC images including sub-folders) and a target folder
- outputs a JPEG for each HEIC image into the target folder
- note that all converted JPEGs are written to the root of target folder so the names of the HEIC images must be unique
The concept is that you would add the target folder (with JPGs) to Tag That Photo and do any tagging and metadata updates with the images. Then when the utility is run a subsequent time, it does the following:
- for each existing HEIC-JPEG pair, the metadata from the JPEG is copied back to the original HEIC image.
- for each new HEIC image, it is converted to a JPEG in the target folder
- you continue to tag the JPEGs in the target folder using Tag That Photo
- the utility could be scheduled to run every week using the Windows Task Scheduler OR you could just run it after each tagging session
Powershell default
& “C:\temp\python\dist\ttp-heic-jpg-utility-v10.exe” source = “C:\temp\support\HEIC” target = “C:\temp\support\temp”
Command line or Powershell 7
.\ttp-heic-jpg-utility-v10.exe source = “C:\temp\support\HEIC” target = “C:\temp\support\temp”
Available via this link (zip format with password ‘tagthatphoto’):
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/software.tagthatphoto.com/ttp-heic-jpg-utility-v10.zip
Recent updates include better support for non-English file systems.
Version 1.3
TTP Utility for creating collages
Utility to make it easy to add a group of photos (up to 8) and arrange them in a collage. You can then save the result and share the collage with friends.
Run via Command line or Powershell… go to the folder where you unzipped the utility. The program needs to create a temp folder so you may need to run in Admin mode.
.\collage-maker-3.exe
Available via this link (zip format with password ‘tagthatphoto’):
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/software.tagthatphoto.com/collage-maker-3.zip