Vision Tagger

Tag and annotate images using Apple Vision framework (macOS only). Detects faces, bodies, hands, text (OCR), barcodes, objects, scene labels, and saliency re...

macOS-native image analysis using Apple's Vision framework. All processing is local — no cloud APIs, no API keys needed.

Requirements

• macOS 12+ (Monterey or later)
• Xcode Command Line Tools
• Python 3 with Pillow

Setup (one-time)

# Install Xcode CLI tools if needed
xcode-select --install

# Install Pillow
pip3 install Pillow

# Compile the Swift binary
cd scripts/
swiftc -O -o image_tagger image_tagger.swift

Usage

Analyze image → JSON

./scripts/image_tagger /path/to/photo.jpg

Output includes:

• faces — bounding boxes, roll/yaw/pitch, landmarks (eyes, nose, mouth)
• bodies — 18 skeleton joints with confidence scores
• hands — 21 joints per hand (left/right)
• text — OCR results with bounding boxes
• labels — scene classification (desk, outdoor, clothing, etc.)
• barcodes — QR codes, UPC, etc.
• saliency — attention and objectness regions

Annotate image with boxes

python3 scripts/annotate_image.py photo.jpg output.jpg

Draws colored boxes:

• 🟢 Green: faces
• 🟠 Orange: body skeleton
• 🟣 Magenta: hands
• 🔵 Cyan: text regions
• 🟡 Yellow: rectangles/objects
• Scene labels at bottom

Python integration

import subprocess, json

def analyze(path):
    r = subprocess.run(['./scripts/image_tagger', path], capture_output=True, text=True)
    return json.loads(r.stdout[r.stdout.find('{'):])

tags = analyze('photo.jpg')
print(tags['labels'])  # [{'label': 'desk', 'confidence': 0.85}, ...]
print(tags['faces'])   # [{'bbox': {...}, 'confidence': 0.99, 'yaw': 5.2}]

Example JSON Output

{
  "dimensions": {"width": 1920, "height": 1080},
  "faces": [{"bbox": {"x": 0.3, "y": 0.4, "width": 0.15, "height": 0.2}, "confidence": 0.99, "roll": -2, "yaw": 5}],
  "bodies": [{"joints": {"head_joint": {"x": 0.5, "y": 0.7, "confidence": 0.9}, "left_shoulder": {...}}, "confidence": 1}],
  "hands": [{"chirality": "left", "joints": {"VNHLKWRI": {"x": 0.4, "y": 0.3, "confidence": 0.85}}}],
  "text": [{"text": "HELLO", "confidence": 0.95, "bbox": {...}}],
  "labels": [{"label": "outdoor", "confidence": 0.88}, {"label": "sky", "confidence": 0.75}],
  "saliency": {"attentionBased": [{"x": 0.2, "y": 0.1, "width": 0.6, "height": 0.8}]}
}

Detection Capabilities

Feature	Details
Faces	Bounding box, confidence, roll/yaw/pitch angles, 76-point landmarks
Bodies	18 joints: head, neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, ankles
Hands	21 joints per hand, left/right chirality
Text (OCR)	Recognized text with confidence and bounding boxes
Labels	1000+ scene/object categories (clothing, furniture, outdoor, etc.)
Barcodes	QR, UPC, EAN, Code128, PDF417, Aztec, DataMatrix
Saliency	Attention-based and objectness-based regions

Use Cases

• Photo tagging — Auto-tag photos with detected objects/scenes
• Posture monitoring — Track face/body position for ergonomics
• Document scanning — Extract text from images
• Security — Detect people in camera feeds
• Accessibility — Describe image contents