.... may also be in the photos below

I just bought a new iMac and am having the same Faces not recognizing faces. I have tagged around 30 faces probably around 250 photos manually.....Faces is not providing any suggestion either in the Pane below or when I go into new pictures. The wheel keeps spinning....I have tried to leave iphoto/faces/name open overnight and the wheel just keeps spinning.....any help would be much appreciated.

Raj

Same again. Moved from a MacBook running iLife (07 I think!) to new MB Pro running 09, using Migration Assistant to transfer the photos. Now, no new pictures appear in the '...may also be in the photos below' section, and I see continual high CPU usage from iPhoto.

Here is the upshot after two calls to Apple Care:

1) un-install iPhoto
2) delete from Hard Drive all iPhoto files in Library>Receipts>
3) delete the face.db and face_blob.db after right clicking on your iPhoto library and to see "package content"
4) re install iPhoto from disk
5) get all the updates for iPhoto
6) start iPhoto allow it to scan for faces. do not interrupt or fiddle while this is going on

As it takes four hours on my machine to do the scanning, I have yet to report on success, but Apple Care has given me a direct telephone line so I can call back and report.

As a test, they made me create a smaller library with only a dozen pictures and it did work. I did, for the first time, see it in action. Looking forward to seeing the whole library this way.

I will post results by tomorrow.

Great! I'm just glad there are smart people working at this. Please keep the rest of us in the loop if you hear anything further!

You can add me to the list of people having this problem. Brand new out of the box 24" iMac with 40gb photo library. Was working fine initially, but then found I was having the same problems as those mentioned above, i.e. spinning gear forever in "may also be in the photos below".

Couple of things I've found to date:

1) Seems to be a problem with either my daughter or I. Faces for others work fine with the "may also be" feature working 100%, but each and every time I try the same thing for either my daughter or I it goes into spinning gears forever mode.

2) After entering spinning gears forever mode, the same thing happens for all other faces in the library. Quitting iPhoto will resolve the issue (for all other faces except my daughter and I), except if I quit in the "may also be" window for either of us.

Have tried rebuilding thumbnails / db etc. and now creating new library. Will report on progress.

My 6 steps (above) towards success, failed. My case too has been escalated to an engineering team. They have asked that I send my 20GB photo library to them, and I have offered to do so -just trying to figure out how. So far, very responsive, concerned sounding, and willing to explore all options. They have my phone number and have given me their direct lines with personal voice mails.

I will provide an update if there is any movement.

Yep, same problem here. New MBP with iPhoto 09. Imported about 5,000 photos (of which about 1000 were RAW). Whilst iPhoto was running every couple of minutes it hung and rainbow spinning wheel appears, using 90%> CPU. Faces hasn't recognised anyone despite me adding quite a few.

Exact same thing for me as well. It works fine on my work computer, but doesn't work on my home computer. I've tried deleting the faces databases, rebuilding the library, and "6 steps" above... but nothing is working as of yet.

The main difference between my home and work machines, is that the home one uses 10.5.8... and the work one is on 10.5.7

paitkenhead wrote:
You can add me to the list of people having this problem. Brand new out of the box 24" iMac with 40gb photo library. Was working fine initially, but then found I was having the same problems as those mentioned above, i.e. spinning gear forever in "may also be in the photos below".

Couple of things I've found to date:

1) Seems to be a problem with either my daughter or I. Faces for others work fine with the "may also be" feature working 100%, but each and every time I try the same thing for either my daughter or I it goes into spinning gears forever mode.

2) After entering spinning gears forever mode, the same thing happens for all other faces in the library. Quitting iPhoto will resolve the issue (for all other faces except my daughter and I), except if I quit in the "may also be" window for either of us.

Have tried rebuilding thumbnails / db etc. and now creating new library. Will report on progress.

Created new library by copying files from 'Originals' folder inside the corrupted iPhoto container. After hours of copying the photos, followed by hours of waiting for it to finish finding all the faces, my first attempt to tag a face resulted in the 'may also be in the photos below' error.

I think the problem is in asking it to do so many cross-checks in one hit. With this in mind I went on to create (another) new iPhoto library - this time importing the library one directory at a time (from 10 to 1000 photos in each directory). As I bring each folder in I've allowed it to find the faces, and using a "FACE IS unnamed" smart album I identify all my John Does.

I then either tag the each face or delete it. The result is that each time you bring in a new directory iPhoto only needs to check the new photos (1 directory worth) for matches. So far so good. While it sounds like a very long and drawn out process I have been able to bring in about 8GB of photos with no problems at all, and iPhoto remains quick and responsive throughout. I actually think that although this process involves more steps that it will in fact be quicker as it's much easier to identify and confirm faces due to a higher successful ID rate (mainly looking at photos of the same people from the one event) - so, so far so good.

Will confirm if I'm able to bring the whole 40Gb library in without problems using this method.

Running 10.6.

Have tried rebuilding faces data several times.

13000 photos.

No luck.

An update - after importing 8,000 photos - 12.3 GB the faces database has started to fail. Because I've been importing each directory one at a time (so usually between 10 and 100, but up 500 photos per import) I've noticed the following:

Firstly - I only have 91 photos of the total 8000 that have unnamed faces. All other photos either (a) have no faces or (b) have named faces.

When the "may also be in the photos below" spinning gears appear this time they will in fact finally come back with some suggestions if left long enough - although it can take several minutes (and this is with only 91 photos to check through).

When it does finally stop spinning, the suggestions are completely wrong - and include random faces from the unnamed faces in the remaining 91 photos. It's as though the face recognition algorithm is failing on each face and including everybody in the 'may also be' list. This is in complete contrast to the way it was performing immediately prior to the spinning gear (accompanied by high CPU use etc) error reappearing. Prior to the problem reappearing, the system was responsive and relatively accurate - with the bulk of suggestions correct.

In previous incarnations of the library (this is my 3rd attempt to create the library) I would have had probably 10k photos with unnamed faces when the error started, and despite leaving the system alone for several hours, it wouldn't come back with any of these crazy suggestions. That's not surprising given how long it takes to respond with only 91 photos with unnamed faces!

I'll have to get back on to customer support I guess, but thought I'd post my findings here to accelerate/aid the path to a solution.

Cheers,
Paul

note: I have not yet upgraded to Snow Leopard.

Message was edited by: paitkenhead to improve layout

Add another "me too" - purchased iLife '09 this week for this feature and the facebook feature. Thought it would be good to upgrade iLife before Snow Leopard...

Did the initial faces scan, but now never suggests any new faces and have the spinning arrows going forever next to ... may also be in the photos below.

Running Snow Leopard, but it was the same in 10.5.8.

My library is pretty old - I started it in 2002 I think. It's been rebuilt by iPhoto a few times since then tho.