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The lack of control is so frustrating. I have been asked to make a selection of photos for a 'celebration of life' for a friend that died, and I NEED to be able to force the app to scan for faces, I don't have weeks for it to put on a low priority task. It's bizarre that this overthinking of control is deemed necessary.
Mac mini, macOS 10.13
Photos is scanning each photo only once for faces, when the photo gets added to the library.
then it will either detect a face or not. Forcing Photos to scan again will not give a different result, unless the photo gets modified, for example, if you retouch it to remove a person or crop it. When you modify photo, Photos will scan it again.
The first, initial scan for faces can take several days, if the Photos Library is very large. Then you will see a message below the People&Pets album, indicating that the scan is not yet complete.
What are you currently seeing in the album People (&Pets)? Is it still showing "Scanning for faces"?
If Photos is not making any progress at all for several days, you may have items in your Photos library that your Mac cannot handle. Older videos or photos migrated from old iPhoto or Aperture Libraries in a legacy format need to be removed from the Photos Library. They can cause the scanning processes to hang and the scan for faces cannot be completed.
The easiest way to check for items in a legacy format is to export all photos and videos from Photos and to reimport them in small batches into a new, different Photos Library. All items, that are giving an error need to be removed from your main library and converted to a different format, before you import them again. You can also use smart albums to check for legacy items, see: How to Weed out Legacy Media in Photos for Mac - Apple Community
Is the system version given below your question still valid? macOS 10.13 High Sierra? This system version could still handle most of the formats used by Aperture and iPhoto, but the upgrade to macOS 10.5 Catalina has removed some of the old iLife frameworks and made many more older videos and image file incompatible.
I am making an album for a 'celebration of life' but there's no way to force scanning of faces
