Photos Isn't Scanning People

Isaac from Balaclava wrote:

"Legacy Media"??? What do you mean

When Apple made the transition from 32-bit to 64-bit final with the upgrade from macOS 10.14 Mojave to macOS 10.15 Catalina, the support for some older media formats from the iLife packages has been removed from the system and Phots can no longer process these older formats after upgrading to a 64-bit only system version. if we did not weed out all media, that can no longer be processed before upgrading to Catalina, we now may be having files in our Photos Library, that can no longer be processed, and may be blocking the background processes for the face recognition and object recognition. I have never found a list of problematic items for Photos, but used the list for iMovie as a guide: About legacy media in iMovie for macOS - Apple Support

i tested all videos by exporting the unmodified originals and then tried to import them in small groups into a new, empty Photos Library. Then I converted all videos that have been shown incompatible to HEVC on my Mac with Mojave, and replaced the original, incompatible files in my main library by the converted versions. ist of the videos from the early iPhoto days had to be converted.

I also removed all PDFs and converted many photos that had been shared by friends and family from Windows PC and were still in the PICT and BMP format.

Which version of Photos are you using? The algorithm for face detection is changing with every system upgrade.

My experience with the face detection is that the progress indicator is not continually updated and can hang for a week or more, but we never know, if the process is really stuck or just not updating the indicator.

When I suspect that some process might be hanging, I am doing two things:

• Restarting the Mac and Photos to kick off all background processes again.
• Checking for legacy items, that might be blocking the processes. One video in an old format, that Photos cannot process or an item with a missing original image file could be blocking the object recognition or face detection.

It is very difficult to test systematically, when the faces scan will happen. I am getting different results on all my Macs - different models, different system versions. But on all Macs and all system versions, I noticed that Photos is even scanning libraries for faces, that are currently not open in Photos. While working with my main system photos libraries the smaller, additional test libraries have also been scanned.

And the face detection proceeded faster after removing all legacy media from the Photos Library.

I wish mine would scan! Here is my scenario .... Mine has been sitting and sitting and sitting ....

1. I have some 55 thousand photos and 6 thousand videos all on iCloud Photos.
2. I have these photos and videos also on my iMac with originals also stored on my iMac
3. I have iCloud Photos with “optimize mac storage” on my iPhone and iPad. I don’t need original copies stored on these devices.
4. I have some 101 people favorited in my Peoples Database. There are others who are identified but not favorited.
5. Both my iPhone and iPad are plugged in at night with Photos in the background and in the case of the iPad sometimes for a few days. On Saturdays, they are plugged in and not touched for 24 hours each week with Photos running in the background. This has gone on for nearly a year.
6. The iPhone has scanned 99% of the photos but has about 200 to go. It has had 200 to go for about 6 months and this number does not reduce.
7. The iPad has scanned 98% of the photos and has about 600 to go. This number also is constant and will not reduce over time.
8. I have turned off iCloud and turned it on. No change.
9. I have factory reset my iPad and just turned on iCloud Photos and watched it populate over about a week and then get stuck again, as above.
10. I have been through Apple Support on 2 occasions and we got to the point of installing debug profiles on my iPhone and iPad and then downloading mega large debug and log files and sending them up the chain to senior engineers for further advice and assistance. In both cases, I never heard again from anyone. When I contacted Apple Support they had no further advice. After the first attempt, we did it all again for the second attempt, and again no feedback from anybody.
11. On my third attempt, support tried to be helpful and promised to get back to me. They did and then told me that "this behavior was normal because the technology was new and slow and greatly affected by the quality and quantity of the pictures in my Photos database. I agreed but noted that a slow process doesn’t stop over 6 months. I know “something” about these things: I taught Software Testing at the University level and have postgraduate degrees in Computer Science.
12. I noted that there were three other telltale signs that all was not right: (a) the key photo on one or two favorited people was not the same on each device (even though the key photo was extant), (b) the number of photos and videos was not precisely the same on the iDevices (iCloud and iMac were fine), and (c) there was one person favorited on one iDevice which was not favorited on all the other devices. I argued that this was an indicator that it wasn’t just a slow machine learning process at play here, but rather, a bug or two and/or some corruption of a local database.
13. I don’t know exactly how the Peoples database is “pseudo-shared” amongst devices. I assume that there is a local peoples database that is synced with the others and each database is stored locally and/or stored in the cloud so that if I identify someone as “Mr X” on my iPhone, that tagged identity propagates into all the other devices.
14. I am very loathed to now also factory reset my iPhone because that process did not help my iPad’s library.

Perhaps this user tip will give you some hints how to search for legacy items: How to Weed out Legacy Media in Photos for Mac - Apple Community

One way to encourage Apple to improve the documentation is to use the buttons at the bottom of the pages in the user manual, Find and identify photos of people using Photos on Mac - Apple Support

there are two buttons - helpful yes or no. If you click No, you can explain which part of the documentation is lacking. I am using the No button a lot, to tell Apple, if the instructions are not clear to me. And occasionally they will be updated.

> Anybody have any legitimate advice?

No. iPhoto/Photos is a freebie app that does most stuff OK but some flaws remain unfixed for a long time.

FWIW I edit metadata and files in 3rd party and other apps (Lightroom 6.14, FCP, GraphicConverter and exiftool etc). And archive and backup photos and movies in plain folders on external HDDs for cross-platform compatibility. I use Photos only as a viewer and an aid to sync to iOS devices (with some minor/major glitches also there -- just ask Tim Cook for a copy of my post a few years ago...).

p.s. I only edit photos in Lightroom 6.14 and sometimes those behave badly metadata-wise. Maybe later I try the newer $$$ Lightroom subscription version. Does it has robust tools for editing metadata and archiving? I have heard bad stories about not-so-standard Adobe metadata practices.

> Apple's Photos app is that convenience for sharing

I have a shared historic hobby album containing image and movies metadata dates going back to year 1800 or even B.C. with GPS data, Captions, Keywords. Google Photos was the best freebie a few years ago but a few months ago it was suddenly much downgraded because the already much-to-be-desired Description info was moved to an obscure location. But this being a free service I consider this irritating flaw only a major 3rd party opportunity to build a better service.

https://support.google.com/photos/thread/143046752/google-photos-is-not-saving-the-descriptions-i-enter-on-my-pc?hl=en

> issues with Adobe

Yes. I only occasionally use Lightroom and Photoshop so I have clumsily booted to Mojave to use Lightroom 6.14 and Photoshop CS 6 13. The $$$ Adobe subscription versions might be OK but I try to avoid spending such extra cash. Just a few days ago studied this muddy Lightroom "Classic" vs "CC" difference.

This team is not apple. We are just users like you. And if Leonie's answer is not enough, then I don't think anyone else's here will be either - she is by far the most experienced photos expert on the forum.

Sorry.