Krubin
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 p.1 #1 · First Impression - Excire Foto 2025 (AI DAM) | |
So I can't call this a "review" as this only came onto my radar about a week ago, and I've been loading and playing with it ever since. For context, I'm a C1 and PhotoMechanic Plus user, and have been concerned of late that PM+ is being discontinued, which would leave me without a DAM solution. That, plus the intrigue of an AI-based offering that would let you use prompt queries to find photos is very interesting. I should note that their AI and AI models are all locally stored and processed, meaning that you're not feeding the web giants with your images. That was a huge plus to me and part of the reason for choosing to give this a go. Here are my first impressions.
I'm still loading up archives, but so far have dropped about 1.5M images into the thing across two "databases" that span my last few years of shooting. They recommend that each instance not exceed 1M photos. The load is a combination of RAW (primarly NEF) and JPGs, both from camera and post-processed.
As reviews have indicated, the initial load is very compute-intensive and takes quite some time. I was expecting this (and not worried about it) and had processes run overnight. No concerns there. Once the app was loaded the fun begins.
People Searching. Choose a reference image and faces are auto-detected. You can select one of the highlighted choices, and do a "search for this face" and it will come back with candidates. There is a "fit" slider to let you choose how much latitude to afford the search - narrow (matches will be more accurate but some photos will be missed) or wider (where you will get false positives but fewer overlooked images). All in all this was amazing. I ran a search of my daughter, which is prominent in my collection, and got about 5k images identified in about 5ish seconds. And highly accurate. Amazing.
Prompt based Searches. Excire Foto allows you to enter a prompt-based search, and will return images based on relevancy. For instance, I asked it to show me images from senior photo sessions, and it returned scores of photos that were in tassel and gown. When I asked it to show me senior photos of small groups containing at least 3 people, it was less successful. They have separate filters for people, geography, and AI-generated keywords, but I would have hoped the prompt would be sufficient.
EXIF, IPTC, and AI Tagging. Here is particular seems to be a mixed experience. They have a keyword "browser" where you can identify which keywords apply, and whether it is "and" or "or" logic, which is fine and good, and behaves exactly as expected. What isn't available (or at least I've not found it) is the ability to marry other EXIF or IPTC metadata with keywording. They have a metadata filter, but the options are limited (5 color ratings, star ratings, flags, and pulldowns for some of the EXIF choices). I cant seem, for instance, to choose my custom sublocation tags, plus AI tags, plus color and star ratings to limit a search.
As an example, I want to be able to choose a shoot event, and then use their AI tags or my own keywording to choose a subset from that event. I can't seem to get there.
Once tagged, you can write back metadata and allow it to be picked up elsewhere, which is nice. YOu can also re-synch metadata into the catalog, so once an image has been AI-scanned you can add external keywording and re-synch, and that works well.
I expect to buy my license when the trial expires, as Excire adds a bunch of features that are useful and will benefit my catalog searches. There are some downsides (for instance, people are not recognized in profile - only face-forward), but given that any people tagging now must be done by hand this is a dramatic improvement, and the ability to prompt and people search is a huge leg-up. I'm also lamenting that they don't seem to have a user forum which would be a huge benefit, though suggestions can be made via their website and questions answered. That said, I'm not sure that it meets all my DAM needs, so until my PM+ goes belly-up, I'm likely to be using a bit of both.
If others have experience with Excire Foto I'm keen to know your experiences, and whether my issues stem from lack of knowledge or lack of capability. With continued investment I'm sure they can close the gaps (should they choose to). It is an interesting offering, but IMHO not quite far enough along to be my only go-to answer.
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