Software to find a digital photo?

Hello all,

I am about to write a program that will allow a user to scan (or
otherwise provide) a picture, and then search through a directory
structure of archived digital photos, and to attempt to find the
picture in its original form. Imagine a photographer who prints pics
for customers, and keeps all the images on a backup drive in case the
customer wants another copy. Customer later requests the image (or
more prints), and photographer has to go in and (from the approximate
date when the photos were taken) find the original image. Been there?

Does anyone know of software available that will do this? Basically
that can recognize a photo that is at least reasonably close to an
original?

I'm assuming the customer-provided image is altered in some way -
different resolution, possibly cropped, possibly scanned from a print,
possibly altered in brightness or contrast or color, etc. It should be
possible to write recognition software that will search based on the
layout of colors and patterns of light and dark, etc, and find the
closest matches.

Any comments welcomed. If there is software out there already then I
might not attempt this.

Thanks!

Dean

On Oct 8, 2:52 am, frederick marco wrote:
On Mon, 08 Oct 2007 04:55:30 -0000, DeanB wrote:
Any comments welcomed. If there is software out there already then I
might not attempt this.

Thanks!

Sorry to burst your hopes, but most of the decent image cataloging programs
already do this. Some are just small stand-alone applications that search all
hard-drives for similar images. (duplicate image finders) These routines are
also included in specialty applications for doing large, single-image mosaics
from thousands of smaller images. Most digital forensic programs designed to
support religiously-ideology law-enforcement even detects photos based on the
amount of flesh-tones apparent in a photo collection. These already exist as an
alert system in all large chain-stores that print your photos for you. Too many
flesh-tones on your memory cards triggers the operator to flag your account for
suspected pornography. If you're architecture includes a lot of beiges, be sure
to wipe your hard-drives clean before they get hold of your hard-drives. These
program being written by people with an overt interest for flesh to find others
similarly afflicted. It's common human psyche to blame others for what they
themselves suffer from. One day they may all grow beyond their immature
fascination with the percentage of skin showing and devote their time to things
much more useful to humanity. But I digress.

Yes, there are dozens of programs that already do this.

Hi Frederick - do you have any examples you could name that do this
specific task?

On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 03:39:14 -0000, DeanB wrote:

On Oct 8, 2:52 am, frederick marco wrote:
On Mon, 08 Oct 2007 04:55:30 -0000, DeanB wrote:
Any comments welcomed. If there is software out there already then I
might not attempt this.

Thanks!

Sorry to burst your hopes, but most of the decent image cataloging programs
already do this. Some are just small stand-alone applications that search all
hard-drives for similar images. (duplicate image finders) These routines are
also included in specialty applications for doing large, single-image mosaics
from thousands of smaller images. Most digital forensic programs designed to
support religiously-ideology law-enforcement even detects photos based on the
amount of flesh-tones apparent in a photo collection. These already exist as an
alert system in all large chain-stores that print your photos for you. Too many
flesh-tones on your memory cards triggers the operator to flag your account for
suspected pornography. If you're architecture includes a lot of beiges, be sure
to wipe your hard-drives clean before they get hold of your hard-drives. These
program being written by people with an overt interest for flesh to find others
similarly afflicted. It's common human psyche to blame others for what they
themselves suffer from. One day they may all grow beyond their immature
fascination with the percentage of skin showing and devote their time to things
much more useful to humanity. But I digress.

Yes, there are dozens of programs that already do this.

Hi Frederick - do you have any examples you could name that do this
specific task?

Well, it's built into or the main purpose of programs like:

ImageDupeless (just for finding similar images)

ThumbsPlus (extensive image cataloging, including similarity searches)

Dup Detector (a phototile/mosaic utility, search by similarity, freeware)

AccessData Forensic Toolkit (an advanced utility aimed at corporations and
governments, is there a difference these days? which also includes image search
algorithms for government officials and CEOs to find their free porn to beat off
to)

These are just the ones I've tested or played with in the past.

There's more. Just do any search at most shareware and freeware sites to get a
more comprehensive list of them.

You may be behind the times though. Now even cameras are being designed to only
shoot an image depending on if it can detect a real or fake smile in the scene.
:-) (--- was that a real or a fake one?)

In article . com,
DeanB wrote:

Hello all,

I am about to write a program that will allow a user to scan (or
otherwise provide) a picture, and then search through a directory
structure of archived digital photos, and to attempt to find the
picture in its original form. Imagine a photographer who prints pics
for customers, and keeps all the images on a backup drive in case the
customer wants another copy. Customer later requests the image (or
more prints), and photographer has to go in and (from the approximate
date when the photos were taken) find the original image. Been there?

Does anyone know of software available that will do this? Basically
that can recognize a photo that is at least reasonably close to an
original?

I'm assuming the customer-provided image is altered in some way -
different resolution, possibly cropped, possibly scanned from a print,
possibly altered in brightness or contrast or color, etc. It should be
possible to write recognition software that will search based on the
layout of colors and patterns of light and dark, etc, and find the
closest matches.

Any comments welcomed. If there is software out there already then I
might not attempt this.

Thanks!

Dean

I am an amateur photographer, so my needs are modest in this area. I
simply keep each set of photos in a separate folder. When I need to find
an old photo, I use the built-in Spotlight search feature in Mac OS X.

I have years of photos sitting on an external hard drive and its fairly
easy for me to locate those photos that interest me. If I was a
professional photographer, I would definitely use something like
Extensis Portfolio.