Agreed. I will update the metdata in my JPG before sending it if you will support it. Particularly taking Tags or Faces.
An alternate would be a supported REST API that would allow us to programatically read our own EXIF data and make and update to synch those tags with Plex
Please! Please! Please! Please!
My workaround is to use a DAM to assign my keywords/tags and then Smart playlists in JRiver MediaCenter (Images) to export photos belonging to whatever keywords I choose into directories created just for Plex. It works well but adds to my workflow and is a waste of drive space.
Still no Support for my tagged Lightroom library. This is very sad story…
Plex photos will not be useful for my archival collections until embedded metadata is used. As it is, it’s a very clumsy way to view photos. There’s only so much identifying info that one can put into a file name.
Hilarious - just received an email from Plex sadly stating that they are stopping the automatic tagging of photos service because no-one is using it.
That’s because we want Plex to support our own tags in our own photos that use the industry standard IPTC XMP metadata formats…
We’ve been telling Plex this for over 10 years I believe (long before Plex moved this forum across to the Discourse platform and dumped all our old forum messages…).
I’ve long since given up using Plex for displaying my photo library - it’s a lost cause and I want to retain my sanity.
What do you use instead? For whatever reason plex is not onboard with photo libraries
I use Photo Supreme 2023 from IDimager. I’ve been using their photo management system since 2007. It was originally called IDimager, and has been continuously improved and kept in step with metadata standards since then.
I use it to prepare a folder containing images that are to be used in a simple slideshow on the HTPC.
It looks good. I have been experimenting with Synology Photos a bit but they don’t use embedded tags. Very good at facial recognition and geotagging but if you download the image the tags don’t come with. They are working on it apparently but proper implantation is unknown. Honestly puzzled as to why some companies haven’t started with metadata standards and just kept up, reinventing the wheel on this topic wastes everyones time
I totally support this feature request. Alas, it probably won’t come into being until a developer themselves sees a personal benefit from having it, regardless as to all of us on the forum that have been asking for it for close to 10 years…
One of the reasons for purchasing Plex Pass is for the ‘Supposedly’ functionality around photos and being able to integrate them with my music library and videos. Geotagging and face tagging are common features that you would expect from any tool which supports photo libraries. Having the ability to search in Plex by camera, shutter speed and other photo related tagging seems stupid when the main three criteria’s of search are missing. These being ‘Topic’, ‘Person’, and ‘Location’.
Come on PLEX… Can you sort this out .
Hi fully support this request, including the HEIC !
Hi @andreasrehbein
In the meanwhile, I have just tried to use your wonderful ppTag, congrats for this work !
My Plex Server is on a WD NAS, and Photo Library (in plex) are on ‘/shares/Public/Shared Pictures/Photo’. But wanted to launch your script from windows
On a Windows PC, I have then installed Python with all the dependencies. And tried to manage to change the config.py.
I tried with PHOTOS_LIBRARY_PATH_PLEX = ‘/shares/Public/Shared Pictures/Photo’ and
PHOTOS_LIBRARY_PATH = “/shares/Public/Shared Pictures/Photo” but it does not work ;-(
FileNotFoundError…
I do not understand the difference between PHOTOS_LIBRARY_PATH and PHOTOS_LIBRARY_PATH_PLEX while from Windows I can access all my photos remotely \192.168.1.20\Public\Shared Pictures\Photo
Thanks for your help
OK understood by myself.
First, turn on “DEBUG” in the last lines of the config.py is a good idea
Then in my case (Plex Server on WD NAS and script running on windows)
PHOTOS_LIBRARY_PATH_PLEX = ‘/shares/Public/Shared Pictures/Photo’
PHOTOS_LIBRARY_PATH_PLEX = “\ \ \ \192.168.1.20 \ \ Public\ \Shared Pictures\ \Photo”
Hi,
the script needs access to the files of your plex installation. Typically for a NAS you can access it also on windows over network. But you need to mount this path in windows a pass it to the script.
The other thing that you need is the path (library) of your photo library in plex. This should be the one that contains your photos saved under the path on the NAS, and that you mounted to windows. This way you can use the script.
Just adding my voice and support for this feature and the current community solutions.
This topic in the forum has now been open for nearly eight years. Do the Plex team ever read the forums for new suggestions (in this case not so new) !
There must be better ways of suggestion product improvements and voting on sequence of change.
It’s wild to me that it’s been 8 years that people have been asking for this and there’s still no support for embedded tags in images.
I like how the Forum asks if I want to revive this topic. Why yes, yes I do. Hopefully someday the Dev’s close this topic as “the feature has been implemented; we listen to our community.”
JPEG and other Photo formats include in their meta-data a Tag field which is easily modified. With over 20k photos I want to easily organize and search photos for specific events, people etc. I can add this information into the Tags meta-data easily.
Unfortunately Plex does not read the photo metadata for Tags and create a list on which I can filter my photos. This is a big drawback, can anyone tell me if this feature will be included? If it is then how do I turn it on?
Would be nice to be able to search for files and folders by name as well
Really is incredible that it’s now been 9 years(!!!) and Plex STILL doesn’t have the ability to read existing photos tags and import them into it’s existing ‘Tags’ library feature 
Especially when this thread has THE MOST replies within photos-library and 2nd most views + there is now a dedicated Plex Photos app which is mostly useless to me without Tags being populated!
For those who haven’t scanned this entire 239 replies thread, here’s a decent AI summary:
Plex doesn’t natively support reading embedded metadata (like EXIF or XMP tags) from photos, which can be frustrating if you’ve meticulously tagged your images using tools like digiKam or Lightroom. But there are clever workarounds to bridge that gap and make your photo library more searchable and organized.
Workaround: Use External Tools to Sync MetadataSince Plex ignores embedded photo metadata, you can use third-party scripts to push that data into Plex manually:
Why Plex Doesn’t Use Embedded Tags (Yet)According to Plex forums and community discussions:
Thank you to @andreasrehbein for giving us the only available 3rd party workaround we have at the moment. I’ll be trying that out as soon as I can. But madness that someone else had to go to all this effort
