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Level 1

30 points

How to turn off Faces and Geotagging?

I do not use nor need either of these capabilities. Is there an easy way to turn this off before I let iPhoto 09 access my library/ Thanks

Posted on Jan 27, 2009 1:43 PM

Best reply

Mike G.

Level 2

411 points

Posted on Jan 27, 2009 4:22 PM

Hi,

"Faces" will spend a bit of time crunching after you load your pictures, but otherwise you can just ignore these features.

Otherwise, if you'd like to run something just like iPhoto '09 but without faces and places, I'd recommend iPhoto '08 🙂

(Sorry, this probably doesn't really help, but the features are rather unobtrusive if you just don't click on them...)

-Mike

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44 replies

Ancient_One Author

Level 1

30 points

Mar 22, 2009 11:26 AM in response to Old Toad

Good fix! Very similar to the old fix in Safari for the web icons. 🙂

Old Toad, got a question about your answer, I usually would copy over the iPhoto 08 library package and then open iPhoto. You indicated to "import" the pictures, just how do I go about importing from an older version of the iPhoto library? If I copy over the library, it will overwrite your handy work.

Thanks, Steve H

Old Toad

Level 10

207,679 points

Mar 22, 2009 11:52 AM in response to Ancient_One

If you have keywords, albums, and other info you must preserve you'll need to use iPhoto Library Manager as follows:

1 - run iPhoto 09 to convert the 08 library to the latest format. (Keep a copy of the 08 library just in case).
2 - create the new 09 library and lock the two files as I indicated.
3 - use iPLM to merge the full library into the new library.

HOWEVER, you might try this (I haven't): after converting the 08 library to 09 *close it immediately*, open the package and lock those two files. Now open the library with iPhoto and let it do it's scanning. This may be sufficient and preclude having to go the merge route.

OT

Ancient_One Author

Level 1

30 points

Mar 22, 2009 11:58 AM in response to Old Toad

Old Toad, thanks for the speedy reply. Nothing fancy in iPhoto, just a bunch (20 or 30) events. Hey, you got me thinking, which can sometimes be very dangerous, I could follow your method, copy the locked files to the desktop, copy over the old iPhoto library, let 09 do its thing and then copy the empty files back into the library. What say you?

Steve H

Old Toad

Level 10

207,679 points

Mar 22, 2009 12:31 PM in response to Ancient_One

You'd have to unlock them in order to move them and then relock but that would work.

Ancient_One Author

Level 1

30 points

Mar 22, 2009 1:02 PM in response to Old Toad

Old Toad, thanks again for all your help.

Steve H

Level 7

20,888 points

Mar 23, 2009 6:51 AM in response to Yer_Man

Terence Devlin wrote:
When it does that it tries to find human faces in the Photos. All it does is identify that there is a face (or more than one) in the Pic. It does not know who the person is. It does not know where the pic was taken. It only knows that there is what it thinks is a human face in the pic.

The other day I imported a picture of my one year old daughter getting up into our refridgerator pulling out stuff, as one year olds will do. But the funny part is in the door was a bottle of mustard with a sort of odd pattern made by the mustard coating the inside of the mostly empty bottle. iPhoto wanted me to identify that "face".
Patrick

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,396 points

Mar 23, 2009 7:59 AM in response to PT

And what a security risk that is! Folks have reported this with brick patterns, faces on TV's in the background of shots and animal faces too.

Regards

TD

Level 7

20,888 points

Mar 23, 2009 9:46 AM in response to Yer_Man

Don't worry. I didn't identify it as "Mustard" to the government will not be able to keep tabs on my extensive condiment collection!
Patrick

Old Toad

Level 10

207,679 points

Mar 23, 2009 9:58 AM in response to PT

It's not the government that will be "looking" at you with a critical eye. It'll be Heinz.

rhd2q

Level 1

9 points

Apr 8, 2009 4:14 PM in response to Old Toad

Does anyone know whether, if I use Aperature instead of iPhoto '09, whether faces will still be generated automatically?

My objection to the faces is the wasted HD space. I'm new to Mac. I have already spent 10 minutes deleting all the faces files from my image directory -- and that was just for 100 photos. When I transfer more than 2,000 photos from my PC, I don't want to have to fool with removing faces from my HD.

Thanks!

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,396 points

Apr 8, 2009 11:12 PM in response to rhd2q

Aperture does not have a Faces feature.

My objection to the faces is the wasted HD space. I'm new to Mac.

The Face thumbnail takes up about 30kb, They are smaller than the standard Thumbnail that iPhoto creates on import. The amount of HD space you are saving is truly negligible.

Also: Don't change anything in the iPhoto Library Folder via the Finder or any other application. iPhoto depends on the structure as well as the contents of this folder. Moving things, renaming things or otherwise making changes will prevent iPhoto from working and could even cause you to damage or lose your photos.

Regards

TD

zblom

Level 1

11 points

Apr 9, 2009 1:13 AM in response to RonAnnArbor

Wow man. "I really don't care about people" - awesome. It is not a ridiculous feature. I happen to love it. I am quite certain no one is pulling data on who I have pictures of and where I have taken them. Talk about paranoia. This is the funniest thread I have read on here.

Apr 20, 2009 9:48 AM in response to Yer_Man

I'm not concerned about security issues.

But I am very concerned about the amount of time it takes Faces to scan any new batch of photos. It is NOT insignificant. In fact, it takes so much hard drive / RAM that I can't do anything else on my computer while it is working. And I don't need it!

Offering the Face feature is fine. I understand the reasons for it, and I'm sure many appreciate it. What I don't understand is why we can't be given the option to turn it off. I never name any faces. But that searching through my new photos takes 4 to 5 times the amount of time it took to import them in the first place. So what should be a simple import from a camera is now taking me about 5 times longer than usual. This is crazy.

Message was edited by: mitchellm

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,396 points

Apr 20, 2009 10:21 AM in response to mitchellm

iPhoto menu -> Provide iPhoto Feedback

Regards

TD

Apr 20, 2009 10:26 AM in response to Yer_Man

Thanks, I've just done that.

Hopefully this will get changed. iPhoto 09 is a nice advance over 08. But this one puzzling lack of feature has me actually considering going back to 08. Just very strange. Perhaps the programmers were drinking way too much espresso and thinking code instead of considering what and when photographers would want a feature.

How to turn off Faces and Geotagging?