How to create a Photos Album with "Unnamed" people in Catalina

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How to create a Photos Album with "Unnamed" people in Catalina

I just upgraded to Catalina and converted my Photos library.

I used to have a smart album that was set to "People" "is not" "%" that would show all photos with a "blank" or "unnamed" person. However, now in Catalina when I run this report it just spits out all 100,000 pictures.

Same thing happens in a new "non-converted" file and in a new profile

I found one article that said to change the Smart Album to "People" "is" and just leave the data field blank. This was interesting it chopped down to 45,000, however there does not seem to be any rhyme or resaon. The resulting report has photos with "No People" , & "Named People" & "Unnamed" people. That should be "all" of my photos so not sure why it was clipped down to 45K.

Anyone else having this issue and found a work around or solution?

Thanks.

Posted on Sep 1, 2020 8:01 AM

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Answer 1

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Old Toad

Level 10

210,597 points

Sep 1, 2020 8:54 AM in response to jasonc447

There's a workaround that one can do to get all unnamed persons in a smart album.

1 - go to the People section and select each person. Click on Photos in the next window and do a ⌘+A to select all. Add a keyword to all of the photos, i.e. "Named". Do this for all people.

2 - create a smart album with the criteria: Keyword is not "named".

You'll have to repeat Step #1 every so often to make sure new photos that have named people in them get keyworded as needed.

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

197,303 points

Sep 1, 2020 9:21 AM in response to jasonc447

Which version of Catalina are you running?

On macOS 10.15.6 the smart album with the rule "Person is " and the name left empty is finding all photos with at least one face with "unnamed" below the faces circle. (How to find all Unnamed Face in Photos 5.… - Apple Community)

But this includes the false positives, like statues, plus the people you do not want to name.

On my Mac I am only finding 2256 photos and 32 videos in this album. About half of them are faces I should really name, for the others I am adding a keyword "Stranger" or "NoPerson".

The album will work best, if you use the "confirm additional faces" dialog for each album in the People album, to get the automatically named faces out of the way. Photos is keeping some names hidden - the faces where it already has assigned a name, but is waiting for the confirmation. It helps to tell Photos where the automatically assigned names are wrong, before you try to name faces in your own.

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Answer 3

jasonc447 Author

Level 1

10 points

Sep 1, 2020 11:06 AM in response to léonie

Yes, that's what I would like to do, but my issue specifically is that I create a smart album of a person, leave it blank and all my photos appear. (unnammed, named and No person visable)

Interesting, I'd like to hear more about what you said, "Photos is keeping some names hidden - the faces where it already assigned a name, but waiting for confirmation."

I feel as though my issue is evolving and changing.

Since My last post if I create an album with Person = blank instead of getting all 100K photos I only get 44K. Seems to be a mix of mainly named photos, but maybe like you're saying some are hidden? The reason I say this is because in the last hour I've found 2 weird issues.

One of the photos was named twice by Apple (I know this because there is no X to delete it). So I would open the picture and there is just one person and one name, but if I tab, it would reveal an "unnamed" circle hiding below I attached a picture. --

Second issue was a photo that appeared with no name so as long as I was there I hit the plus and added a name and then an "Auto Apple Named" unnamed circle appeared like it was "hiding" in the background. you might be onto something there. Trying to duplicate this issue.

Let me know if you have any additional thoughts on that.

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Answer 4

jasonc447 Author

Level 1

10 points

Sep 1, 2020 10:51 AM in response to Old Toad

This helps a little. I was able to to follow your steps to create an album with all the currently tagged people, then exclude it from a smart album.

The issue I am running into is that several of my pictures have more than one person, so if a person has already been tagged, that photo will not be displayed because the "Named" album is excluded.

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Answer 5

jasonc447 Author

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Sep 7, 2020 11:36 AM in response to jasonc447

I just reinstalled Catalina fresh on an external Drive and imported 600 pictures

I named a few and let Apple Assign faces so there are several "Unnamed" faces.

Created the Smart Album with Recipe "Person" "is" = "Blank". The album brings up all pictures with a person field, blank, unnamed and named. so this recipe does not work.

I want to create an album with all "Unnamed" people. If anyone has figured this out let me know. Thanks.

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Answer 6

jasonc447 Author

Level 1

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Sep 5, 2020 3:13 PM in response to léonie

Running Catalina 10.15.6

Thanks

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How to create a Photos Album with "Unnamed" people in Catalina

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