Add Folders to the Database
Choose material folders from your computer, add images, spreadsheets, PDFs, videos, and other files to the database, and generate the search data you need.
Choose material folders from your computer, add images, spreadsheets, PDFs, videos, and other files to the database, and generate the search data you need.
Adding folders is the first step before search. The app scans files in the selected folders, records them in the database, extracts thumbnails and metadata, and optionally generates data for image search, pose search, OCR, color search, face search, and duplicate detection.
Steps
- Enter the search workspace.
- Use the add folder entry in the folder area or toolbar.
- Select one or more folders that contain your material.
- Choose the features you want to build.
- Start the task and wait for the progress task to finish.
The folder tree on the left will show the indexed folders after the task completes.
Choosing Features
The feature choices control what data is generated during indexing:
- Image search: builds visual features for reverse image search.
- Semantic search: lets you search images with natural-language descriptions.
- Pose search: extracts human skeleton and body-pose features for finding similar standing, sitting, or action poses.
- OCR search: recognizes text inside images, useful for IDs, certificates, screenshots, invoices, and documents.
- Face search: detects and indexes faces for searching people.
- Duplicate detection: prepares data for finding duplicate or near-duplicate images.
- Color search: prepares dominant-color and color-similarity data.
If you only want to try the product quickly, start with image search and the global strategy. You can add more strategies later.
Choosing Image Search Strategies
- Global: a general-purpose strategy for most images.
- Global with background removal: focuses more on clear subjects such as products, people, or objects.
- Global color: emphasizes color similarity and color composition.
- Local keypoints: useful when you only have a crop or a local pattern and need to find the full image.
Where to Watch Progress
After starting, watch the task progress area at the top. Large folders, videos, PDFs, Excel files, and face recognition tasks may take longer.
Common Cases
- If results are missing after indexing, check whether the needed strategy was selected.
- If Excel files were not parsed, confirm the spreadsheet environment and refresh the folder.
- If a folder contains many nested folders, indexing can take more time on the first run.
- If you add new files later, use refresh database instead of adding the same folder again.