I recently purchased a Tonfotos license. I really appreciate the core functionality of the software, especially the direct writing of metadata into files (XMP) to future-proof my archives. However, coming from Picasa, I find that the software severely lacks flexibility and user-friendliness in several key areas.
Here is my constructive feedback on what needs to be improved:
- The Genealogy Tree module feels unfinished:
- No Export/Print button: There is no visible button to export or print the tree directly from the right panel. Users have to guess or know hidden keyboard shortcuts.
- No dates displayed: Even though we can enter birth dates in a person’s profile, the tree graphic does not display them (it only shows first and last names). A family tree without dates loses much of its purpose.
- Cannot choose a “root” person: We cannot select a person and choose to display only their descendants. The software forces the display of ancestors, which forces me to manually delete family links just to isolate a specific branch.
- Facial recognition and UI lack comfort:
- Handling of red “?” (Unknowns): Unlike Picasa, which centralized unrecognized faces in one place, Tonfotos leaves them scattered. You have to stumble upon them by chance, photo by photo, to validate or ignore them, which is a huge waste of time.
- Cannot resize face boxes: We cannot manually resize the bounding box of a face if the AI cropped it poorly.
- No automatic validation: Even when the software is highly confident, we still have to manually validate everything. There is no automatic tagging option.
- False positives: The algorithm too often detects faces in background elements (walls, inanimate objects) that don’t look like faces at all.
- Invisible portrait count: In the main list of people, the total number of portraits does not appear next to the names. You absolutely have to click on each name to see how many photos they have.
I hope this feedback from a long-time Picasa user will help you prioritize the most urgent UI and UX improvements.
