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Face ring does not circle faces in some older photos

I have an old MacBook Pro that is running High Sierra and Photos V3 because I can no longer update it. I bought a new MacBook Air for exactly this reason, it's running Catalina and Photos V5.


In the V5 version of Photos, I noticed the same/similar issue as noted on this other thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251366721


For some photos (not all), the rings that should encircle faces do not in V5 of Photos, but for the exact same photo in V3 they do encircle the faces properly. Sounds like a bug to me, wondering if anyone else has seen this and/or has found a solution.

MacBook

Posted on Jul 11, 2020 7:00 PM

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Posted on Jul 11, 2020 10:48 PM

If a circle is not correctly centered on a face, I usually edit the photo in some way. Usually, I tweak one of the adjustments without really changing the appearance the photo. It may also help to perform a minor change to the crop settings for the photo. If the photo has not been edited at all, then I take the time to set the adjustments to my liking. After I save the edits, I normally see a jump in the CPU and disk write activity on my Mac for some seconds. During this time, Photos seems to re-analyze the image for faces, and often the circle(s) will then appear in the proper location, although this can take several minutes.


If the CPU and disk writes to not jump to a higher level after editing the photo, then either Photos is busy with other work in the background or a background process has a problem or is not starting up as it should. You might like to reboot your Mac, wait for the Photos activity in the Activity Monitor to drop to a reasonable low level and then try again.


Be aware that there is a small possibility that your V5 version of Photos may not find the same faces as were found by V3. In this is the case a circle may actually disappear, although after Photos uses more time to analyse your images it may re-appear one day.


Good luck.

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Jul 11, 2020 10:48 PM in response to ACABThomas

If a circle is not correctly centered on a face, I usually edit the photo in some way. Usually, I tweak one of the adjustments without really changing the appearance the photo. It may also help to perform a minor change to the crop settings for the photo. If the photo has not been edited at all, then I take the time to set the adjustments to my liking. After I save the edits, I normally see a jump in the CPU and disk write activity on my Mac for some seconds. During this time, Photos seems to re-analyze the image for faces, and often the circle(s) will then appear in the proper location, although this can take several minutes.


If the CPU and disk writes to not jump to a higher level after editing the photo, then either Photos is busy with other work in the background or a background process has a problem or is not starting up as it should. You might like to reboot your Mac, wait for the Photos activity in the Activity Monitor to drop to a reasonable low level and then try again.


Be aware that there is a small possibility that your V5 version of Photos may not find the same faces as were found by V3. In this is the case a circle may actually disappear, although after Photos uses more time to analyse your images it may re-appear one day.


Good luck.

Face ring does not circle faces in some older photos

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