Today’s Question: I know I should be routinely keywording my images when I upload them, but seldom do. With all the advances of AI, are there any apps or services that will do that automatically?
Tim’s Quick Answer: There are tools available that address the role of keywording based on AI from two different angle. So, in large part the first step is deciding which approach might make the most sense to you, and which software tools support that approach.
More Detail: There are software tools that can be used to assign keywords to photos based on image analysis driven by AI technology, which is the primary focus of today’s question. These tools enable you to have images analyzed, and then have keywords assigned to them automatically.
One option is ON1 Photo Keyword AI (https://bit.ly/on1keyword), which in my experience seems to be the more effective tool for adding keywords based on image analysis. It can be a bit slow to analyze images, but it is also relatively comprehensive in assigning keywords. Of course, depending on your preferences, you may find the automatic keywording to be a bit too comprehensive, with a wide variety of concepts and abstract terms included among the potential keywords that can be assigned to your photos. Another tool in this category, by the way, is Excire Search (https://excire.com/en/excire-search/).
However, an argument could be made that this type of software may become somewhat obsolete relatively soon. That’s because other software tools approach this same concept from something of the opposite direction.
With software such as Adobe Lightroom (the cloud-focused version, not Lightroom Classic), the Photoshop Elements Organizer, Apple Photos, and Google Photos (among others), you can actually search for images in your library based on AI image analysis. In other words, you can find photos based on their content without actually having to assign keywords.
There are advantages (and disadvantages) with both approaches. The advantage of AI-based keywording is that the keywords actually get assigned to your photos, so those keywords can be leveraged beyond the specific software you’re using. The advantage of image search powered by AI is that you can find photos without having to add keywords to metadata, and you also avoid the clutter of having numerous keywords assigned to images.
You could easily argue either side of this decision. However, my view is that while keywording can indeed be helpful in organizing and locating photos, as the AI search capabilities improve the notion of using keywords may seem somewhat old-fashioned.
For the moment, the key challenge in my mind is the workflow considerations. If you’re going to use AI-based tools for assigning keywords to your images, you’re going to introduce a bit more complexity to your workflow. If you’re going to depend on AI-based search, you need to accept that keywords won’t be added to metadata. Perhaps more significantly, if you want to use AI-based search you need to consider whether you’re willing to switch to a different software application for managing your photos to take advantage of these features that aren’t offered universally.
