Level 1

1 points

Faces is missing so many faces... any way to get it to rescan?

Is there a way to get Faces to re-scan my library (without losing what I already have tagged)?

It took about 2 hours for it to scan my library initially but as I go through and tag, I am seeing hundreds upon hundreds of photos where perfect faces aren't even recognized as a face. Maybe a button to re-scan the current photo? Something. I am not looking forward to manually highlighting and tagging all these photos.

I hate to say it, but so far Google's face recognition in Picasa has been more accurate than this, and I'm using both with the same 17GB photo library.

MacBook Pro (2.5GHz, 2GB RAM), Mac OS X (10.5.6), Four iPods and a hole in my wallet

Posted on Jan 29, 2009 12:50 AM

42 replies

Feb 15, 2009 7:08 PM in response to canargentralian

canargentralian wrote:
being overly precise with you own additions to the faces database is pointless, just use it to identify the person rather than the face and move on. Hopefully this is an issue that will be addressed by Apple as it defeats the purpose of "faces".

Good point. Thanks. Of course, even with this refinement, it's still incredibly tedious to manually assign faces to a good 40-60% of portraits... it doesn't quite salvage the situation!

But interesting point.

Feb 15, 2009 7:14 PM in response to larryd517

I can't believe I didnt review this page before I purchase iLife 09 today. Just to add to what has already been said, it took about 2 hours for it to scan my library and Faces only recognized a small percentage of the photos with faces of the same person. What's the difference between manually entering Names as a Keyword vs using the Faces feature. A profound disappointment.

larryd517

Level 2

191 points

Feb 16, 2009 1:28 AM in response to MarkR9110

If Faces was the main reason you purchased iLife 09, I think you should contact Apple directly. They are usually good at dealing with 'profound disappoints'.
I got a new MacBook, it didn't cost me anything, so I have no reason to be upset.

Sam6444

Level 1

9 points

Feb 17, 2009 6:15 PM in response to Indyhouse

When I did the initial scan it identified maybe 20% of faces available to identify. So that means there is 80% faces (people) that I need to identify or tag. This to me seems like missing the whole point of the face recognition thing. It seems like it could at least scan the photo's where there are no faces identified what so ever. What a great concept and look. I just wish it would work. 😟

hawkwood

Level 1

81 points

Mar 1, 2009 10:15 AM in response to Indyhouse

I'd like the option to select a photo or group of photos and click a button labelled "Rescan these for faces"

In addition, I've had a number of photos of random objects labelled as faces, and usually find these when I'm confirming faces. I'd also love an option to delete the face box or mark it as "Not a face" when in confirmation mode.

Yer_Man

Level 10

165,984 points

Mar 1, 2009 12:04 PM in response to hawkwood

hawkwood

Send your wish list to Apple:

iPhoto menu -> Provide iPhoto Feedback

Regards

TD

Mar 2, 2009 8:54 AM in response to Indyhouse

not sure if this will do anything, but it's at least supposed to help with iPhoto 09's speed...

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20090227072825458

Mar 21, 2009 3:34 PM in response to Brian S. Campbell

I just tried picasa web album online. I uploaded about 100pics and let it look for faces. The system for adding/renaming/removing faces is 100x better than iPhoto's, and this is a free online service!

Common apple! Dont show of with nice 'tutorial' movies where everything works perfectly. Like with all apple products, there are too little settings (just think about Timemachine).

Mar 30, 2009 1:40 PM in response to AppleLuverr

Machine learning is not easy. I'm not saying nobody does it better than Apple; apparently, some do. Although it is surely true that iPhoto won't use faces that it didn't recognize as face to improve the identification of whose face it is, it might be that the information will be used in a later, improved release of iPhoto to improve face recognition (as opposed to identification).

Mar 30, 2009 6:09 PM in response to Indyhouse

if your photos are dark or hard to see, it's more likely that iPhoto wouldn't scan faces in these photos. however, if you would like to add these faces into the Faces feature, you can click on "Add Missing Face", but keep in mind, whenever you click "Add Missing Face", it won't be added into Faces' process of recognizing the faces using those tags you add by "Add Missing Face".

another way... if you haven't updated to 8.0.2, then I strongly suggest you to do so, because it now recognize way more faces than before with 8.0.1.

Mar 31, 2009 8:31 AM in response to haynboimac

If iPhoto 08 now does a better job of recognizing what is a face in photos (as opposed to identifying whose it is), is there a way to have it rescan my library in such a way that recognized, identified faces are left alone?

Mar 31, 2009 7:03 PM in response to Indyhouse

I've been using a new feature in 8.0.2 that haven't seen discussed about recently.

Now you can choose a photo, control+click (right-click), and the contextual menu has a nice "Detect missing faces". It works with a single photo or group of photos.

There is also a "Rescan for Location", but I don't use Places, so I can't tell if it's new or not, as the "Detect missing faces" feature definitely is.

JJ

Mar 31, 2009 11:24 PM in response to rolandomerida

Thanks, I hadn't noticed the new "Detect Missing Faces." It could have been placed in a more evident context. For example, when I've clicked on the "Name" icon and am looking through a sequence of photos for unnamed faces, the right-click has no effect. So when I notice an unrecognized face, I have to click "Done", move to a view with thumbnails, and right-click one of them. In summary, exactly when I see that a rescan could be useful, it isn't available, and where it is available, I don't see whether there are any missing faces.

Yer_Man

Level 10

165,984 points

Mar 31, 2009 11:29 PM in response to Richard Liu

Richard

iPhoto menu -> Provide iPhoto Feedback

Regards

TD

Mar 31, 2009 11:50 PM in response to Richard Liu

A thought: iPhoto could use co-occurrence to help it suggest the identity of faces. For example, if it has many photos in which the same two persons have been identified, and if in a particular photo one of them has been identified and there are some unidentified faces, it could analyze whether some of them could be the other person.

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Faces is missing so many faces... any way to get it to rescan?