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How to Install Shotwell with Face Detection in Bionic Beaver 18.04 LTS

rated 0 times [ 3] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 2801 / 1 Year ago, sun, february 5, 2023, 11:17:35

I'm transitioning from Google Photos and I really liked Shotwell's features. However, face detection/recognition is very important to me because of how I manage my photos. I viewed this blog post that apparently shows how to do it, but it's very vague IMO since I'm not exactly an expert in this area. I tried doing the meson build but there were a ton of dependencies that I manually installed (maybe wasn't supposed to do that?) and one of them messed up my apt system (I ended fixing that by removing all other software in the Software app and doing a dist-upgrade which removed unnecessary packages and dependencies).

Is there a more step-by-step guide to doing this? I really like Shotwell but I must have the face detection feature (I know that it is in beta, but I saw a video that proves it works).

(I know I could use digiKam but I really like Shotwell!)

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aradxalte

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2 Years ago

answered 1 Year ago ingwhin · Accepted Answer

This is more of a workaround, but it is possible to get the faces feature working in a few simple steps by installing the Unstable flatpak of Shotwell (I know because I'm happily using it right now!).

Steps:

Install Flathub

Go to official Shotwell Building & Installing page

Click the button that says "Install Unstable"

Copy the URL (link) of the current page (after you click on the button). As of the time of writing, the link is: "https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/shotwell/raw/master/flatpak/org.gnome.Shotwell.unstable.flatpakref"

Fire up your terminal and run flatpak install https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/shotwell/raw/master/flatpak/org.gnome.Shotwell.unstable.flatpakref (you may need sudo admin rights - I apparently did not have to enter my sudo password - and you'll need to accept the install prompt by typing y)

Wait... (Patience is a virtue :-))

Click on the Show Applications button and click on "(Unstable) Shotwell"

Voila! Import some images, select a single image, and bask in the glory your success - a new "Faces" option in the bottom bar (Note: When I installed the unstable version, it removed the stable version so now I only have Unstable Shotwell - but at least there's face detection yay!!!)

Note: Of course, since this feature is still a WIP, Shotwell might think that your curtain is a face (or for that matter, your door), and there is no obvious options to scan your photo library and automatically tag faces, but hey - at least it's there!