Train a custom image classifier

Use the EfficientNet algorithm to train custom image classifiers based new images and new labels. This will reuse the ImageNet weights of the model making the new models faster to train and giving state of the art performance.

1. Input data

In order to train a custom image classifier you need some labeled images. These images need to be ordered in a directory structure where each image is stored in a directory with the name of the label.

As an examples we will use the hymenoptera dataset, a dataset with ants and bees images. Download it from here. The structure of the directories in the zip file is:

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train
    ants
        img1.jpg
        img2.jpg
        ...
    bees
        img1.jpg
        img2.jpg
        ...
val
    ants
        img1.jpg
        img2.jpg
        ...
    bees
        img1.jpg
        img2.jpg
        ...

Upload these directory structure to an S3 bucket: e.g. s3://my-bucket/hymenoptera_data/.

2. Subscribe to the offering

1. Log in to AWS with a user with administrative privileges
2. Navigate to the EfficientNet Algorithm listing on the AWS Marketplace
3. Click Continue to Subscribe

4. Click on Accept offer (it might take 1 or 2 minutes for AWS to accept the offer)

   Note that there is no charge for subscribing to this offering only when launching the Algorithm on SageMaker

5. Once you are subscribed click Continue to Configuration

6. On the Configure and launch page
   1. Select the latest version (2.0.0) and region where you want to launch the Algorithm
   2. Click on View in SageMaker

You will be sent to the Amazon SageMaker Create training job page.

3. Launch Training Job

On the Create training job page:

1. Name your job e.g. ants-and-bees
2. Select an IAM role that has access to S3 (where the data is stored) and SageMaker
3. Check that under Algorithm source the selected option is: An algorithm subscription from AWS Marketplace
4. Check that under Choose an algorithm subscription the selected option is: EfficientNet - Train Image Classifier
5. Under Resource configuration
   1. Select an instance type that has a GPU, the minumum recommended is ml.p3.2xlarge
   2. Under Additional storage volume per instance (GB) add enough space for the model and checkpoints to be stored, for example: 10 GB
6. In the Hyperparameters section configure the hyperparameters for the model, see below for a table of parameters available
7. In the Input data configuration you will have two Channels created train and val (both channels are required)
   1. Fill the S3 location for each channel
      • For example: s3://my-bucket/hymenoptera_data/train and s3://my-bucket/hymenoptera_data/val
8. In the Output data configuration section set the S3 location to save the output model
   • For example: s3://my-bucket/ants-bees-output
9. Click on Create Training Job

A new Training Job will be created. Note that based on the data and hyperparameters it might take a while for this job to finish.

After the job is finished you can deploy a new endpoint for the custom trained trained model.

Output

When Training Job succeds a new model will be saved to the location you specified on S3. The saved file will be a .tar.gz file with some metadata alongside the best mode.

File	Description
args.yml	Arguments of used to trained the model
labels.json	JSON map of ID to label
model_best.pth.tar	Serialized version of the best model found
summary.csv	Metrics saved for each epoch

Metrics

The training job outputs 4 models metrics to keep track of the performance while and after the job is running.

Metric	Description
trail:loss	Loss in the training dataset
validationo:loss	Loss in the validation dataset
validation:acc_1	Accuracy on the top-1 label
validation:acc_5	Accuracy on the top-5 labels

Common Errors

If the Training Job fails check the logs on CloudWatch for that Job to see why it fails.

Some common errors are insuficient space on the device (increase the storage volume) or not enough resources on the GPU (try reducing the batch size).

Also check that the path to S3 are correct. The job outputs some debug information to make this easy. The /opt/ml directory where this files are located should look like this:

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/opt/ml/input/data
    train
        ants
        bees
    val
        ants
        bees

Hyperparameters

Param	Description	Default
epochs	Number of Epocs to train	250
batch_size	Batch Size	32
aa	AutoAugment Policy (v0, original, rand-m9-mstd0.5)	rand-m9-mstd0.5
decay_epochs	Epoch interval to decay LR	2.4
decay_rate	LR decay rate	0.1
drop	Dropout rate	0.3
drop_connect	Drop connect rate	0.2
lr	Learning rate	0.016
model_ema	Enable tracking moving average of model weights (true or false)	true
model_ema_decay	Decay factor for model weights moving average	0.9999
opt	Optimizer (sgd, rmsproptf)	rmsproptf
opt_eps	Optimizer Epsilon	0.001
remode	Random erase mode (const, pixel)	pixel
reprob	Random erase prob	0.2
sched	LR scheduler (step)	step
workers	How many training processes to use	1
warmup_lr	Warmup learning rate	1e-6
weight_decay	epochs to warmup LR, if scheduler supports	1e-5