Is there a way to use facial recognition in iCloud Photos for large batch updates, rather than go through individually?

You wrote: "I now login and find hundreds of photos have lost their names and no longer categorized."

When did that happen? What has changed before you noticed the missing faces?

I am regularly seeing lost faces names for some faces after a system update or upgrade, when the algorithm for the face detection and face recognition has been improved or modified by the update. This is causing Photos to repeat the faces scan and usually most of the missing names will be reassigned, when we use the "Confirm additional faces" dialog. The reason for this is, that after an update or upgrade the new algorithm mfg find the faces in a slightly shifted position, or may find additional faces or will no longer find the previously detected face at all. In that case it will wait for a confirmation. As far as I can tell the faces detected automatically by Photos are usually stable and survive updates or syncing with iCloud between devices with different system versions, while the manually added faces, that Photos could not detect automatically, tend to vanish after a major upgrade.

I am saving the named faces by adding each assigned name also as a keyword. The keywords have been useful to carry the assigned names even from iPhoto to Aperture and then to Photos. They are having the added bonus, that they are exported, when I export the photos to back them up, and I can see them in the Info for a photo in Photos. Photos does to even show the name of the person anywhere in the Info, just a miniature thumbnail of the face, that does not tell me at all, what the person is called. How to use Keywords to Back Up the Named Faces in Photos and Improve the Search for People … - Apple Community

> I've spent months building people & pet libraries and manually adding names to the photos

FWIW whenever I have done a job that I'd rather not do again, I backup. BTW iCloud Photo Library is not a backup, but a synchronization service.

Like added and edited metadata, Photos stores face names in its internal database (Google Photos does the same). It can export that in image metadata as:

[XMP-iptcExt] PersonInImage : Name1, Name2, Name3

Or in .xmp sidecars as (3rd party tools can write that to the original image's Keywords metadata):

[XMP-dc] Subject : Name1, Name2, Name3

I would not trust any proprietary image database to preserve added metadata so I make sure to insert that info to the image and movie internal metadata. Or try to make good backups of the proprietary database.

GraphicConverter has face detection but I have only briefly tried it.

Perhaps the deafening silence is down to the questions you're asking:

• Any additional recommendations to stabilize iPhoto?

What do you mean by "stabilize" - and it's Photos, not iPhoto

• Are there any 3rd party software apps which can provide facial recognition for an iCloud library?

No. But don't feel bad, no other software developer allows 3rd party apps to do this on their libraries or services either. They're all proprietary.

• iPhoto facial recognition if fair/good but the Manual process is fine for a few photos... but HORRIBLE for large photo libraries or trying to digitize batch uploads. No short cuts, no ability to automate facial recognition of single photos which have lost names and no speed tagging (ie...top 10-20 faces) which you can point and click vs doing the 4-5 steps to manually add each individual face.

This isn't a question. Feedback goes here: Feedback - Photos - Apple. Also, I suggest (below) that this isn't what the app is designed for.

• Is Apple going to invest in enhancing facial recognition or is it not a priority for iPhoto?

No one here knows what plans - if any - Apple have for anything, it's a user to user forum.

I'm not sure Apple is competing in the "photo archving" race. Photos is not designed to be the ultimate photo app for anybody. It's a useful tool aimed squarely at iPhone shooters who like a large degree of automation. It does do other things, but not as gracefully as more powerful apps that you pay for. I would suggest you need a more powerful app for the job.