As you may be aware, I’m not very happy with the current version of Windows Live Photo Gallery at the moment. I believe strongly that it has problems that desperately need to be fixed.

There are other, less pressing, issues with WLPG 2011 as well. These include the fact that slideshow quality is degraded in comparison to earlier versions. Another is the fact that people are finding that their workflow performance has taken a nose-dive since upgrading to WLPG 2011.

However, apart from all that, there are other things that niggle. These days most people are unaware of how much of their identity is available online. That almost certainly includes me, even though I think I’m being careful. Thus, here’s another example from WLPG 2011. It has automatic face recognition in it. People are probably happily tagging (identifying) their friends in photos using WLPG 2011, which in turn is squirreling away metadata containing this information into the photos. If these photos are subsequently uploaded to online sites where they can be viewed by anyone, then this metadata is often equally available to all.

And what is this metadata? Well, it is at minimum, the names of the people in the photos. But if those people are also known to you as email contacts, or have a Windows Live identity, then this information is also included as metadata in the uploaded photos. True, the metadata will not spell out their email addresses for all to see – they are at least encrypted. However, after reading this comment, (from a Microsoft employee) I do wonder about the Windows Live ID:

PersonLiveCID is the unique ID generated for everyone with a Windows Live ID, it might be possible to use this and I’ll be playing with some of the Azure Services sometime to see if you can resolve this to a contact. That could create some very interesting possibilities.

That would be “interesting” in the Chinese sense, I think.

Yes, I know that I’ve said before that Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 is a disaster, but more problems caused by using it just keep crawling out of the woodwork.

The first problem I stumbled across was that if you are a photographer who uses IPTC metadata to record information about where your photos were taken, then WLPG 2011 will write false GPS data into your photos without telling you that it is doing so.

I, and others, have reported this issue to Microsoft, and I understand that they are looking into ways of correcting it. Meanwhile, I’ve become aware of another issue with WLPG 2011. It also screws up the Exif section of the metadata in images.

While trying to scrub my images clean of the false GPS data inserted by WLPG 2011, I noticed ExifTool was reporting that many of my images had problems with their Exif metadata. Often it was a simple warning that the Makernotes in the Exif section have been damaged. This is a warning from ExifTool that another utility has written to the Exif section and damaged the structure in some way.

In many cases, however, ExifTool is reporting that more serious damage has occurred and some of the data written into the original Exif section by the camera that took the image has been corrupted.

Here’s a screenshot that shows an example of an image exhibiting both types of issue (warnings and corruption). The screenshot is of Geosetter, and the highlighted image shows errors being reported by ExifTool (Geosetter uses ExifTool under the covers to do all the heavy lifting). Click on the image to open it full sized in a new window.

You’ll notice that the thumbnail, and some of the others, have a dark blue marker pin in the top left corner. That indicates that the image contains GPS information. But the interesting thing is that, for that particular image, I did not supply GPS data; WLPG 2011 has inserted it by itself.

Now here’s a screenshot of one of the other thumbnails that Geosetter is indicating have GPS information. For these thumbnails, I explicitly inserted GPS information myself, in other words, WLPG 2011 has not had cause to write anything out to the files. Notice that for this thumbnail, ExifTool is not reporting any errors or warnings. That’s the case for all the images where I have explicitly added GPS information.

By the way, even though these two shots were taken at the same place, the GPS inserted (without my knowledge) by WLPG 2011 is wrong, and is located 500 metres distant.

I’m now going back through my images, and as far as I can see, all those which are being reported by ExifTool as having problems with their Exif metadata are ones that have had GPS information inserted by WLPG 2011.

The really irritating thing about this discovery is that WLPG has a track record of not dealing correctly with Exif metadata. Previous versions of WLPG have been reported as corrupting the Makernotes (data written by the camera manufacturer) in Exif.

It would appear that nothing has been done with WLPG 2011 to address this issue. So not only does it insert gratuitous, and false, GPS data into your images, it will also screw up their Exif metadata.

I repeat, this is a disaster.

24 Hours Later

So, I’ve been looking into this a bit more, but the more I look, the more I think: OMFG. The damage that has been done appears to be quite extensive, and will take some time to repair.

Today, for example, I decided to examine just one folder of photos and compare the contents with the contents of the same folder as it was in a backup taken on the 1st June 2010 – a date chosen because it was before any of the betas of WLPG 2011 had been released to the public. On that date, I would have had the previous version of WLPG installed and running. The first beta of WLPG 2011 wasn’t available to the public until the 24th June.

I looked for a folder that had photos containing entries in the IPTC Extension “Location Created” metadata fields. These fields are used by WLPG 2011 to store textual information for a location (e.g. the street address, city, state and country) in the image files. I don’t use these fields; I use the older IPTC Core “Location” fields for this purpose. So if I find an image file that contains IPTC Extension “Location Created” metadata, then I know it has been touched by WLPG 2011.

I chose a folder containing 24 photos that had been taken back in 2007, and which had IPTC Extension metadata present. I then got the same folder from the 1st June backup to compare the two side by side.

Here’s a screenshot of the folder, as it was on the 1st June, being displayed in Geosetter, with the metadata of the selected photo being shown (click on the screenshot to see it full-size in a new window):

Now here’s a screenshot of the same folder as it currently exists in my computer. The same image file has been selected to show its image metadata:

I’ve expanded some of the more interesting metadata sections. As you can see, the metadata has changed substantially. Let me list the ways:

1. ExifTool is now listing a warning about a possibly incorrect Maker notes offset, together with three warnings about invalid camera data in the Exif section.
2. While the original (backup) file had 98 elements of camera maker data in Exif, the current file has now only 11 left.
3. The current file now has GPS metadata present in the Exif. This has been inserted by WLPG 2011, not by me. You will note from the other thumbnails in the second screenshot, that all the other files are also showing that they now have GPS data in them. None of the original files had GPS data. By the way, the GPS data is also incorrect by 300 metres.
4. The original file had its Exif byte order in little-endian fashion; in the current file it is big-endian. According to the guidelines of the Metadata Working Group (of which Microsoft is a founding member), the “endianness” should be preserved, not reversed.
5. The original file had a filesize of 3.1 MB; the current file has shrunk to a mere 1,553 KB.
6. The current file now contains a JFIF block, which is not present in the original file. It also has changed YCbCr values, possibly as a result of this.
7. The current file now contains an IPTC Extension metadata section, which lists textual information for the “Location Created”. This section is not present in the original file.
8. The original file is showing that it was last modified on the 27th November 2009. The current file is showing that it was last modified on the 30th September 2010, which also happens to be the date of the final release of WLPG 2011. This is not a coincidence.

There may be other, more subtle, differences between the original and current versions of the files, but I’m already disheartened enough by the above list, particularly by the Exif corruption and by the fact that my JPEGs have been compressed in size without my knowledge or permission.

I suppose I can cut my losses by doing a full restore of the photo folders from the backup taken on the 1st June, but this will still not take account of new files that have been created since that time, or of older files that I have been working on.

What a mess. Thanks, WLPG 2011.

48 Hours Later

Oh gawd, it just keeps getting worse… I had hoped that WLPG 2011 was only corrupting Exif metadata when it actually changed the metadata, for example when it added (false) GPS coordinates to the Exif section.

After further examination of files today, I have discovered that WLPG 2011 will merrily corrupt Exif metadata even when it doesn’t need to change any of the Exif content.

You see, one of the new features of WLPG 2011 is automatic face recognition. When it discovers what it thinks is a face in a photograph, it will ask the user to confirm the person’s name. Once it gets confirmation, it will then write XMP metadata into the image file. This XMP metadata is structured according to Microsoft’s People Tag. However, when WLPG 2011 writes this XMP metadata out to the file it will also (a) corrupt the Exif metadata section and (b ) compress the JPEG image.

I’m afraid that I’ve been confirming face tags suggested by WLPG 2011. And now, every single one of those images that contain face tags has also had its Exif corrupted.

What a f*cking mess. Thanks, WLPG 2011.

Update 23 November 2010

I thought that it would be worthwhile to report that Microsoft are listening to those of us who are reporting tales of woe caused by using WLPG 2011. Please see here for a status report on where I think we are…

Update 2 December 2010

There’s an update to WLPG 2011 that addresses the geotagging issue. See here for more information.

I see that Adobe has recently released Photoshop Elements 9. I last used Photoshop Elements when it was at version 4, and stopped using it because the Organizer part of the package had too many limitations for me. I did like the features of the Photoshop Editor, but I hated the Organizer with a passion.

Still, time passes and now we’ve arrived at version 9, so I thought I’d just take it out for a test drive and downloaded the trial version.

Since the Organizer was the weak point the last time around as far as I was concerned, I fired that up first to take a look at it. I imported a subset of photos taken this year and started kicking the tyres.

The first thing I noticed was that the Organizer had successfully imported the IPTC Keyword metadata from the files and used this to create Keyword Tags. However, it did not, unlike Windows Live Photo Gallery, recognise that these were hierarchical tags and create the Keyword Tag hierarchy automatically. Take a look at this screenshot (click on the image to open a larger version in a new window):

You can see the imported Tags under the “Imported Keyword Tags” category, but notice how the Organizer has simply imported them all as a flat list – it has not grouped them into a hierarchy. Also notice how a Tag with multiple levels is too long to be displayed properly.

Now, it is possible for the Organizer to have a Keyword Tag hierarchy, you can see the start of one in the screenshot above, with the first levels being “People”, “Places”, “Events”, “Other” and the “Imported Keyword Tags”. So, having imported all my tags as a flat list, I would have to manually, and laboriously, re-create my tag hierarchy in Organizer to match the hierarchy described in my files’ metadata. This would not be a quick job…

The next question would be, having got a tag hierarchy created in Organizer, what happens when I write out Tags into files as metadata? Does it store them in a hierarchical manner?

To test that, I created a simple hierarchy under People (People/Family/Test level 1/Test level 2/Family member 1) and assigned that tag to a test image in the Organizer:

Here is a screenshot of what the Organizer tells me about the IPTC metadata of this image before I applied the tag:

You can see that there are two hierarchical Keywords already present in the file’s metadata. Here’s what the file’s metadata becomes after I tell Organizer to write out the Tags to the file:

Not good. Although the Tag “Family member 1” is in a hierarchy in the Organizer, it’s just been written out as a flat, single level, tag to the IPTC metadata.

From this I conclude that the Organizer does not support hierarchical tags in file metadata. That was the case back with version 4. It’s disappointing that it’s still this way.

One other thing I looked at with the Organizer is how well it plays in a multi-tool workflow. Like many digital photographers, I have a number of different applications that I use for different purposes. It’s extremely important that these will all play together, and do it as transparently as possible, with little or no effort on my part.

So, for example, what happens if the metadata of a file gets changed by another tool outside of Photoshop Elements 9?

I tested this by first importing some image files into the Organizer. I then added a tag to a selection of the files using another tool (IDimager). Both Picasa and Windows Live Photo Gallery will pick this change up and update their Tag list to reflect the new one and the files that contain it. Not the Organizer, though. It just sat there and insisted that the tags associated with the files in question were as originally imported, and nothing had changed.

I thought I’d try and reimport the files to see if Organizer would then realise that a new tag had been added. Not a bit of it – it simply insisted that it already knew about these files and did not realise that the metadata had changed:

As far as I’m concerned, this is a showstopper. The Organizer in Photoshop Elements 9 just doesn’t play at all well in a multi-tool digital workflow. It was the same back in the days of version 4. Plus ça change…

And just in case you think I’m being unnecessarily hard on the Organizer here, which is intended for ordinary mortals rather than professional photographers, just consider this… If you have a family and you have a number of computers in your household, then you had better make sure that just one computer is devoted to cataloguing your photo collection. These limitations of the Organizer mean that you can’t have Photoshop Elements installed on multiple computers, and expect the metadata and Keyword Tag hierarchies automatically synchronised between the family PCs. That is one of the plus points about Picasa and Windows Live Photo Gallery. I do all the heavy lifting of cataloguing and Keyword maintenance on my main computer using IDimager, and all the other computers in the household running Picasa or WLPG pick up the changes automatically. That will not be the case with Photoshop Elements. It may export the Tags as metadata, but it doesn’t export the tag hierarchy.

Oh, one other disappointing thing about the Organizer: geotagging. It uses Yahoo Maps in the geotag interface. The satellite coverage of Yahoo maps in comparison to Google or Bing Maps is but a pale shadow. For the majority of my photographs, I get a plaintive “imagery not available” message if I try to place a geotag accurately.

After all this, I haven’t had a chance to look at the editor in Photoshop Elements 9. I’m sure it will be powerful, but frankly, my dears, I don’t give a damn… On the odd occasion when I need more capability than my usual tools give, I can always fire up the editor from Photoshop Elements 4. I see no reason to upgrade to version 9.

This is a bit of a rant. This is a bit of a rant about Microsoft software. This is a bit of a rant about Windows Live Essentials 2011.

Windows Live Essentials (WLE) is a suite of utilities from Microsoft that began life back in 2006. WLE 2011 is the fourth major iteration of the suite, and was released in its final version on 30th September 2010. It now contains a number of utilities:

• Windows Live Family Safety
• Windows Live Mail
• Windows Live Mesh
• Windows Live Messenger
• Windows Live Messenger Companion
• Windows Live Movie Maker
• Windows Live Photo Gallery
• Windows Live Writer

Of these eight utilities, I really only made extensive use of four of them (Mail, Messenger, Photo Gallery and Writer). With the release of WLE 2011, and the acquisition of a camera that can shoot HD video in addition to photos, I had expected to start making use of Movie Maker.

Instead, I’ve found that the 2011 versions of both Movie Maker and Photo Gallery have surprising limitations that represent a step backwards from earlier versions. Worse still, Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 has a showstopper of an issue that means that I cannot use it until it is resolved in a satisfactory manner by Microsoft.

Windows Live Movie Maker

Windows Live Movie Maker (WLMM) is a complete re-write of an earlier effort by Microsoft: Windows Movie Maker (WMM). Unfortunately, in the rewrite, Microsoft’s desire to make easy-to-use software has resulted in the dumbing-down of the software to the point where functionality has been removed.

Windows Movie Maker had both a “storyboard” view and a “timeline” view for editing and assembling videos. Windows Live Movie Maker 2011, on the other hand, has dropped the timeline view and only offers a storyboard view for editing. That’s a great pity, because having the timeline view makes some operations very easy to do, and they can only be done with difficulty, if at all, in the storyboard view. For example, in WMM’s timeline view, you could edit the audio of a video clip. You simply can’t do this in WLMM’s storyboard.

Limitation number two is that, as far as Microsoft is concerned, we all live in either North America or a few other places. That’s because when you produce your finished video, WLMM will produce it in the NSTC standard. Much of the world (over 120 countries and territories) uses the PAL standard, but Microsoft does not support this in WLMM by default. You can cook up your own custom settings, but this is not always straightforward. Take a look at this discussion on the WLMM Help Forum to get an idea of some of the issues involved.

One would think that since Microsoft is apparently trying to make easy-to-use software that they would offer a simple “NTSC or PAL” switch in WLMM, just as practically every other video editing software does, but no; for some reason they have concluded not to do it, leaving us to hunt for information as to how to set it up for ourselves. Two steps back…

Windows Live Photo Gallery

Windows Live Photo Gallery (WLPG) has had more functionality added to it in each of the major releases. WLPG 2011, for example, now has automatic face recognition, geotagging, and a “photo fuse” feature added to it over the features that were in WLPG 2010.

However, there is at least one limitation that I’ve found in comparison with WLPG 2010, so it’s not just a simple move forward. WLPG 2010 had a slideshow function – select your photos, click on the Slideshow button, and you got an instant slideshow of your selected photos. WLPG 2011 seems to offer the same functionality, but when you click on its Slideshow button, what is actually happening is that it passes the job over to Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 to do the work of producing and running the slideshow. And here’s the limitation: the quality of the slideshow produced by WLMM 2011 is noticeably poorer than that which was produced by WLPG 2010.

When I raised this issue in the WLPG Help Forum, the first response back from Microsoft was to deny that anything had changed between WLPG 2010 and WLPG 2011. They then conceded that things had in fact been changed and that “photo quality in slide shows in Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta is indeed a bit degraded when compared to the original file source”. The reason given was that “since videos have been incorporated to the feature, high definition photos in the slide show are forced to level with the resolution capacity of a video format”.

While Microsoft may think that slideshow quality has been “a bit degraded”, I see it as noticeably degraded – to the point where I consider it unacceptable in quality, and a step backwards from what was available in WLPG 2010.

And then we come to the showstopper in WLPG 2011: geotagging.

Unlike every other application I’ve seen (IDimager, Picasa, PhotoShop Elements, Lightroom, Microsoft Pro Photo Tools, Geosetter) that offers geotagging either directly or via a plug-in, WLPG 2011 does not offer a map-based interface to position geotags. Instead, it uses a text-driven database to assign geotags. The problem with this, as I’ve pointed out here and here, is that this is very prone to errors of interpretation.  If Microsoft had left it at simply a textual description of a geotag, I could have lived with it. But no, they go a step further: they also write out GPS coordinates into the Exif metadata of the image. In effect, WLPG 2011 is guessing the GPS coordinates based on text contained in the contents of the IPTC metadata fields that deal with information about location. Microsoft are really doing geocoding, rather than geotagging. The problem is that very often, these guesses turn out to be wildly wrong. Even that I could live with, if WLPG 2011 had given me an option to stop it writing out these GPS coordinates into my images; but it doesn’t, and that is an unforgivable showstopper in my book. WLPG 2011 has entered false GPS data into thousands of my images.

It’s really odd, the automatic face recognition feature of WLPG 2011 asks the user to confirm its guesses as to who the person in a photo is each and every time. Yet the geotagging feature is making guesses about GPS coordinates and writing these out to image metadata without even notifying the user that it is doing this.

I, and others, have raised the issue in the WLPG Help Forum here and here. The worrying thing is that so far, while the issue has been acknowledged by Microsoft, the manner of their replies are, to my eyes at least, rather along the lines of “it’s not a bug, but a feature…” Sorry, Microsoft, it’s not a feature, it’s a disaster. One that could have easily been avoided if they had given us the option to turn off the writing of GPS coordinates into image metadata. And if they had given us a map-based interface, like any decent geotagging application, then users could have checked WLPG’s guesses, confirmed those that were correct, and rejected the false ones.

WLPG 2011, despite the fact that it uses the term “geotag” in the application, is actually doing geocoding, rather than geotagging if you follow the strict definition of the terms. There’s probably a reason that everyone else does geotagging in their applications, and that is probably because it isn’t so prone to horrible errors as Microsoft’s geocoding approach has turned out to be.

This issue makes WLPG 2011 not so much two steps back in comparison to WLPG 2010, but more of a step off the cliff…

Update 2 December 2010

There’s an update to WLPG 2011 that addresses the geotagging issue. See here for more information.