How long does it take to recognize faces

Question

Level 1

20 points

How long does it take to recognize faces

After adding 20 or more names for faces, I clicked for iphoto to identify faces. several times I've let it run for an hour or two, but today I had time to let it run more, and so far it has run for about 7 hours at 100%, without showing any results.
Is it a matter of just letting it run? Will it eventually find everything? will it take this long every time I want to use it?

There are about 30,000 photos in total, although not all have faces.

mac book pro, Mac OS X (10.6.1)

Posted on Oct 11, 2009 1:06 PM

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Answer 1

The_Drew

Level 1

17 points

Oct 11, 2009 1:51 PM in response to richardlw

I'm having exactly the same issue. I keep checking software update to see if I'm missing something but to no avail.

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Answer 2

Oct 13, 2009 4:29 PM in response to richardlw

I have about 69,000 photos, and thought it was time to start using iPhoto. I bought the iLife 09 upgrade to get the Faces feature.

Sadly, it just does not work on a large library. I gave up after three days of importing & indexing. The Faces feature just does not suggest matches. It sits with a little spinning symbol as long as I will let it.

I know the feature CAN work, as it seems to work on a test small library. In fact it worked quite well. It's obviously large libraries that mess it up.

If Apple doesn't fix this, then I want my money back. I don't care about the other parts of iLife, I only want Faces.

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Answer 3

Klaus1

Level 9

52,749 points

Oct 13, 2009 5:01 PM in response to richardlw

iPhoto can't identify faces it has not seen before, you have to do this manually.

Go to iTunes Help and type in 'faces'. Lots of useful information there.

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Answer 4

Oct 13, 2009 5:29 PM in response to AndreTheGeek

I decided to call support and ask them about this. The guy said that with 69,000 photos, I would have to leave my Mac running for about a week for it to get through the face indexing.

He also said that once complete, it would always be working in the background when iPhoto is open.

He said the more I tag manually, the faster it will go. He also said that this issue would likely be resolved in the next version ('iLife 10').

I guess I will need to decide if I want to leave my Mac indexing for a week.

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