19 August 2022

Excire Foto Helps Users Manage Huge Photo Collections

One of the best things about digital photography is that individual images cost nothing, but that's also a huge problem. Even amateur photographers routinely amass digital photo archives with tens of thousands of images and sometimes hundreds of thousands. Finding one particular image can be nearly impossible.

Professional photographers, especially those who are old enough to remember film, have organizational methods that include dates and names. Possibly locations. Perhaps even other indicators. Adobe's Lightroom Classic is a fine organizer, but two applications from Excire makes the process of categorizing images easier so that they can be found quickly.

Excire Search is a plug-in for Lightroom Classic and Excire Foto is a standalone application. I wrote about an Excire Search update in September of 2020. The plug-in's operation and characteristics are about the same today as they were in 2020, but Excire Foto has received a significant upgrade.

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But let's take a quick look at Excire Search, first. When the application has been installed, it runs when Lightroom Classic starts. When you add photos, it's important to run the Excire initialization process. It had been several weeks when I ran the initialization process and more than 11 hundred images were new. The initialization process took only a few minutes. Excire Search does not catalog files in certain uncommon formats, gigantic files that are usually edited versions of existing photos, and any photos for which you've had Lightroom create virtual copies. Excire Search adds its own key words to any key words that you have already assigned to photos.

When it's time to use Excire Search, you can provide one of your photos or an external photo for comparison, or search for people, faces, or keywords. If I want to look for pictures of pies, I could (1) select a photo of a pumpkin pie, (2) open Plug-in Extras from Lightroom's Library menu and select Search by Example Photo, and then (3) choose whether to give preference to the photo's content or color, set how restrictive the search should be, choose whether to search the entire catalog or just photos in the film strip, and set the maximum number of files to view.

The resulting search (4) returned 250 photos including a lot of pies and quite a few pumpkin pies, but there were also other photos that included round objects including a hamburger and even at cat. Excire's artificial intelligence is excellent, but it's not perfect. This should not be a surprise. Perfect or not, the process will usually find the photo you're seeking faster than you could find it manually.

Excire Foto For 2022 Includes Some Remarkable Features

At its most basic, the application is photo management software that categorizes photos and assigns keywords to them. The objective is to help photographers find photos faster. Excire Foto analyzes photos quickly and uses very little disk space.

I uninstalled a previous version of Excire Foto so that the new version would have to examine every photo on the disk. Adobe Lightroom Classic can create sidecar files for any proprietary file formats such as those from Canon, Nikon, and Sony cameras. The sidecar files duplicate information that Lightroom stores in its own catalog file, but I consider these files to be a necessary backup for edits made to raw files. So Excire Foto encountered 113,000 files in 1558 folders. Tens of thousands of these files were XMP sidecar files from Lightroom and some were other sidecar files from Exposure X7. In total, Excire Foto processed 78,202 images in 5 minutes 45 seconds.

I also had the application (1) locate duplicate images. Most of the duplicates were in folders from my early days of using Lightroom when I sometimes stored output files in the same location as the original photos. This is an exceedingly bad practice. In less than 5 minutes, it found 2544 duplicates and (3) displayed them. At that point, I could use Lightroom to delete or move the duplicates.

Excire Foto offers excellent organizational tools, including the ability to create photo collections and groups without moving the original images. One oddity is that there's no easy way to edit a photo in Lightroom Classic once you've located it using Excire Foto. The Edit In options are limited to Photoshop, Lightroom (but not Lightroom Classic), the Windows photo tool and snipping tool, and other installed applications such as IrfanView, Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, and Affinity Publisher.

Images can be given rating numbers (1 to 5 stars), any of 5 color tags can be assigned, and any image can be flagged as accepted or rejected. These are the same as used by Lightroom Classic, but the ratings, tags, and flags are not forwarded to Lightroom Classic. That's unfortunate and those who depend on Lightroom Classic would probably be better served with the Lightroom plug-in even though Excire Foto has some additional features. So even though this is a review of Excire Foto, Lightroom Classic users will probably find Excire Search 2 the better option.

An extension for Excire Foto called Excire Analytics costs $40. That's in addition to Excire Foto's $100 price tag, but the two can be purchased together for $130. If you're thinking of buying Excire Foto, you won't regret adding the Analytics option. Excire Search 2, the plug-in for Adobe Lightroom Classic is $70.

The extension provides insight into how you use your photographic equipment. For example, which cameras or lenses you use most frequently and the settings or camera-lens combination you used to take your top-rated pictures. I might wonder which cameras I've used the most this year. Because the Canon DSLR is currently in use exclusively for capturing images from old family photo negatives that are stored in a separate file structure, the Canon has been used infrequently this year for what I'll call normal photos.

But ... Oops!

What I discovered is that I used the camera in my smartphone most frequently, the Sony point-and-shoot camera second most frequently, the Canon DSLR hardly at all -- just seven photos, and the camera in the IPad even less. Despite minimal use for normal photos, the Canon was used extensively for photographing roll-film negatives. But there's a problem here: For 2022, Excire reports 423 images made with the Canon, but I knew there were more. Lightroom Classic's Library Filter shows that I've made 923 images this year with the Canon, not 412.

There are also differences between totals for the OpticFilm 35mm scanner (Excire Foto reports 2075 but the correct number is 2671); numbers for the Epson Perfection Scanner are correct (both sources say 89) as are the values for the smartphone camera (both say 5). Note that the Excire Foto filter is set to find all photos present in the Film & Print Scans directory made by all cameras during 2022, the same criteria used for the Lightroom Classic filter.

Although the overall numerical relationships are close, the incorrect counts are troubling. My guess is that the developers will find the problem and correct it in a later version.

 Excire Foto Is A Worthwhile Addition To Photographers' Tool Kits

The artificial intelligence that powers Excire Foto and Excire Search 2 does a remarkable job of adding meaningful keywords to images. The standalone Excire Foto has limited abilities to interface with Lightroom Classic, but the Lightroom Classic plug-in can make it possible to find photos faster even if you don't add any personalized keywords.
Additional details are available on the Excire website.
The cat rating scale ranges from 0 cats (worst) to 5 cats (best).

Short Circuits

When Something Goes Sideways, Don't Panic

When my wife followed a link to a recipe on her computer, the screen was immediately filled with dire warning that was accompanied by technobabble from the speaker. She brought the computer to my office and said "I don't know what this is."

The text-to-speech announcement that was playing cautioned that the computer should not be restarted because that would do something terrible. Several items on the screen offered links to "repair" the problem or phone numbers to call for "help". She had not clicked any of the links or called the phone number, and those non actions were exactly right.

The Microsoft logo was present on some of the displayed graphics and the presentation might have been somewhat credible except that:

1. Microsoft never pushes warnings to users.
2. Microsoft would have no way of knowing that Phyllis's IP address had been compromised.
3. Phyllis's IP address is a non-routeable address on our private network and the publicly visible IP address could reference any of several computers, phones, tablets, televisions, and streaming devices on our home network.
4. The display was far too busy and garish to have been created by Microsoft even if the company pushed warnings to users, which we've already established that they don't.
5. No legitimate organization would ever take over a computer and repeatedly play a scary warning.

So I rebooted the computer, ran a diagnostic scan that found nothing, and returned the computer to Phyllis. That left just two questions:

1. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?
   • Either the website that claimed to have the recipe Phyllis wanted to see was intentionally malicious or bad code had been planted on the site.
   • Because she had followed a link from a legitimate site, it's likely that the website had been compromised.
2. WHAT WAS THE POINT?
   • Computer support scams usually use social engineering to convince the user to download a support tool that allows the scammer to connect to the computer with the promise of fixing the problem.
   • Instead of fixing the problem, the scammer seeks out financial applications or anything else of value and absconds with it.

Once I had confirmed that the computer was running properly and that no malware had been installed, I could have used the browser's history function to identify the malicious site. I didn't do that, primarily because I didn't have time for it that day, but there is a lesson here: As the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says, DON'T PANIC. Until you're certain that you know what's happening, no action is usually best. Turning off the Wi-Fi connection would have been a good thing to do just in case malware was active. I didn't think it was, but I have to admit that I simply didn't think of killing the network connection. And finally, be sure not to do whatever the message on the screen tells you to do. Click no links. Call no phone numbers.

Still Running A Third-Party Antivirus Application On Windows?

I've had a love-hate relationship with antivirus applications from when these applications first became available and probably that's not an uncommon point of view.

Possibly in an attempt to justify their existence, third-party protective applications seem to be overly chatty, informing users every time they perform any action, no matter how mundane, and frequently warning about threats that really don't exist. All of this activity distracts the user and slows the computer.

Microsoft includes antivirus, threat protection, and a firewall in Windows Security. The various components remain silent most of the time unless an action realistically needs to be approved or acknowledged by the user. The built-in security functions interrupt users less and have only a minimal effect on system resources.

The history of third-party protective applications usually starts with the development of a decent anti-virus application, but then the developers add more and more functions until it becomes so large and resource hungry that users grumble about the system's performance. I used Norton Antivirus in the early days. When it slowed the system too much, I moved on to AVG and then Avast. Avast now owns AVG. One of the more unfortunate stories is MalwareBytes, which was an excellent application for diagnosing and removing malware. Then a raft of new features caused serious performance problems.

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So today my computers run just Windows Security. It's always made sense to me that the operating system's developer would be in the best position to provide protective applications. The frequently updated AV-TEST Institute score for Windows Security is usually 6 for protection, performance, and usability. That's the highest score possible. Many of the third-party apps also score 6-6-6, but if the built-in app earns top marks, why pay more for an app that might be more intrusive and that might slow the computer's operation?

No matter which antivirus system you use, those with G-Mail and Outlook accounts will have the benefit of malware detection on the email servers. Most web browsers also have built-in functions that may detect malicious websites, phishing sites, and other dodgy techniques. Windows has a built-in Smartscreen filter that can issue a warning if there's a problem with a specific piece of software or if you attempt to run an application that isn't known to Smartscreen.

Unless you need some of the extra features that third-party applications provide, Windows Security is probably good enough. What are some of these special features?

Some antivirus applications monitor your webcam to keep scammers from turning the camera on remotely. But today, most webcams have an opaque slide that can be left in place until you need to use the camera. If not, a well placed piece of tape can do the same thing. A few protective applications monitor security breach websites and will let you know if your email address has been exposed. Given the number of breaches that have occurred, it's better to simply assume that your email address is public knowledge and to concentrate on safe computing. Some security bundles include password managers or offer a virtual private network (VPN). Others may have options to securely delete files or offer secure on-line storage. Some applications watch for patterns of malicious activity even if no malware has been detected and a few can watch for attempts to encrypt your files. So a third-party application may have features that you find attractive.

Just bear in mind that every additional feature will have an adverse effect on the computer's performance. How much performance degradation is acceptable in the name of more robust security?

Twenty Years Ago

Using Video From A Home Computer To Create A DVD

In 2002, we were beginning to contemplate not only editing video on our computers, but also the ability to make DVDs that could be played on standard TV disc players. The SCM Microsystems Dazzle DVD Creation Station was one of the players. I wrote:

SCM Microsystems has just released a new version of its Dazzle DVD Creation Station 200, a hardware and software solution for creating videos and photo slideshows to play back on a home DVD player.

The DCS 200 allows consumers to capture DVD quality video from any camcorder, VCR or TV, as well as read photo and other files from all types of flash card media. The device comes with a complete suite of Dazzle software which allows users to capture and edit video, as well as design and burn DVDs and photo slideshows. The DCS 200 also supports outputting video to videotape, Video CD, and the Web.

The DCS 200 connects to the PC via a standard USB interface, making it easy to set up. In addition to RCA video, S-Video and RCA audio ports for inputting and outputting video, the DCS200 has slots for reading all types of digital flash memory cards, including CompactFlash Type I and II, IBM Microdrive, SmartMedia, SD Card, MultiMediaCard, and Sony Memory Stick.

The software components include ...

Dazzle MovieStar 5.0, a video editing package that enables users to capture video, cut out unwanted scenes, add titles, create 3D transitions, add background audio or voice over narrations, and drop in special effects. It also lets users output video to videotape, VideoCD, S-VCD, DVD, video e-mail, or even stream video over the Internet via the Dazzle Webcast Theater.

Dazzle DVD Complete, a program that allows the user to design and burn DVDs. This program makes it possible to add interactive menus, chapters, and titles, to edited video and to choose from graphic themes to create a video CD or DVD.

OnDVD, an application that allows users to import digital pictures, edit and touch up the images, organize a slideshow on a timeline, add background audio, and then burn a Video CD which plays back on a DVD player.

Dazzle DCS 200 (Windows 98 SE, 2000, ME and XP) is priced at $300 (MSRP) and is available now.

In 2003, SCM sold its digital video business to Pinnacle Systems and SCM later became part of Identiv, which also includes Bluehill ID AG (a Swiss technology company focused on RFID) and Hirsch Electronics, LLC (a provider of physical access control solutions). Pinnacle Systems continues to manufacture digital video hardware and software for broadcast markets and consumers.