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I would like to know what the difference is between the Tag Buddy and Face tag stock Gallery options (as available on the Samsung Galaxy SIII stock Gallery application).

Also, why is one option activated via a sliding-button and the other one via a check mark as opposed to both looking the same. I guess the only difference is that with the sliding-button one can also click on the text on the left-hand-side of the entry to view more information (in this case some descriptive help information), whereas this behavior is not available when an entry text is followed by a plain checkmark.

I also don't understand, if the Tag Buddy features are all enabled (Weather, Location, Person, and Date), then why can't I view any of these by clicking on the Details menu entry when viewing a picture with the stock Gallery app? Where is the weather information stored, I've installed the EXIF Tag Editor (Photo) app, but none of these are showing up in the EXIF info, and if I include a photo note or a sound file to the picture, these aren't showing up there either? Where are these pieces of information stored, and how do I access them and make sure they are copied when the picture is copied to another storage location?

The following screenshot shows these two entries under the Tags heading.

enter image description here

When the Camera app takes a picture:

  • The date and time the picture was taken is stored in the picture's EXIF data.
  • The GPS coordinates will be stored in the picture's EXIF data (but not the place name) as long as the Location tag's camera setting is set to 'On'.

However, why is the Tag Buddy feature in the Gallery app instead of in the Camera app? After all, if I take a picture:

  • wouldn't I want the weather information to reflect the time the picture was taken, and not the time the picture was opened in Gallery?
  • wouldn't the location information have to be the one corresponding to the GPS coordinates at the time the picture was taken, and not at the time the picture was opened (after all the user of the camera may choose not to store EXIF GPS info in the picture)?

Finally, if Face Buddy is enabled and the list of people is stored somewhere, then how can I view such list of people as a list stored on the device?

Thanks for clarifying these issues.

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  • I don't have Samsung products, but from reading a while, it seems the info of Tag Buddy is stored by Samsung itself, not stored as EXIF info. Probably local SQLite database on internal storage, but it's hard to investigate further without having the device to test.
    – Andrew T. ♦
    Commented Mar 19, 2015 at 11:09
  • Your device doesn't have this feature? But what exactly would Tag Buddy store in the SQLite database?
    – John Higginstyne
    Commented Mar 19, 2015 at 22:28
  • Yes, this is Samsung-specific features (link).
    – Andrew T. ♦
    Commented Mar 20, 2015 at 2:27

1 Answer 1

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Tag Buddy lets you store information along with the photo (though as Andrew T. noted, this might be stored on the device and hence won't necessarily go with the photo when the photo is copied to another device). It allows you to tag:

  • Weather
  • Location (though GPS should be in the EXIF and might be)
  • Whom you are with
  • Date (though this is in the EXIF)

The 'whom you are with' is just a list of people.

Face Tag, on the other hand actually tries to recognize faces in the photo so you can tag them, you can see that Facebook, for example, has both of these features, the ability to tag faces in photos versus being able to list 'With who..' for a photo.

Face Tag also allows you to click on the tag and do things like call or message the person. I'm not sure if Tag Buddy has this ability.

I believe Face Tag is an Android development and Tag Buddy is a Samsung addition, which might explain the somewhat overlapping functionality, not to mention the slightly different interfaces (such as check mark versus slide)

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  • Thank you for your excellent answer, but please see my updated post: in Gallery, with tag buddy, weather shows the present day weather at the location the picture was taken? location shows the location name if the picture has GPS tags? Date always shows the date the picture was taken of course.
    – John Higginstyne
    Commented Mar 19, 2015 at 23:05
  • But if Face Tag is turned off, then there must be a place where the list of people that are on the pictures can be entered manually. And where is this??? Thanks.
    – John Higginstyne
    Commented Mar 19, 2015 at 23:05
  • Yes, Facebook supports both the list of people as well as the very same list with each having the coordinates and size of the square on the given picture that delimits the face of the given person. I had never thought of these as separate, but you're right, they are: a picture could have no faces but could still have a list of people that were there with you when the picture was taken. Thanks for pointing this out. (BTW, I'd like to upvote but I don't have enough points).
    – John Higginstyne
    Commented Mar 19, 2015 at 23:08
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    Sorry, I just saw your update. It's not clear where the info is stored, though Android stock camera is capable of saving GPS info in the EXIF tags. I would give up on TagBuddy if you want the info to be saved outside of the phone. You don't have to upvote the answer to help me out, just select it as the correct answer. :)
    – David Madison
    Commented Jun 10, 2015 at 14:57

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