Faces problems; intrinsic to iPhoto '11 or due to library upgrade from '09?

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Level 1

39 points

Faces problems; intrinsic to iPhoto '11 or due to library upgrade from '09?

I have been experiencing many problems with Faces in iPhoto '11 that I did not see in iPhoto'09. Can anyone tell me whether these are most likely bugs currently intrinsic to iPhoto '11, or caused by the upgrade of my 20,000+ photo library from iPhoto '09 to iPhoto '11? Has anyone found any workarounds for these problems?

Examples of Faces problems include:

(1) Photos in my Unnamed Faces smart folder (Face-is-unnamed) that show no unnamed faces
(2) Mis-matches between Info frame list of faces in the photo and the face frames visible in the photo
(3) Fewer photos appearing for face confirmation than stated; usually one less. Sometimes I am told there is one unconfirmed face, and none appear at all.
(4) iPhoto offering faces as possible matches that look (at least to me) nothing like the face in question, (although they may be in the same photo), but failing to offer identical or near-identical poses of it.

2.93 GHz i7 iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.5), iPhoto 9.1 ("iPhoto '11")

Posted on Nov 24, 2010 10:25 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 28, 2010 6:45 PM in response to KRDHarris

I'm experiencing the exact same issues since upgrading from iPhoto '09 to iPhoto '11. My biggest issue being the unnamed faces that can't be found on the photos themselves - your issue (1). Since upgrading, I have over 1000 photos in my library that now have unnamed faces. Yet, there's no empty unnamed face box in the photo. So frustrating!

I called AppleCare and their response was to wipe out the iPhoto library and start again. Given the countless hours I have put into manually naming Faces and Places, this is not an option.

Hopefully a fix is identified for us.

Message was edited by: Martin and His Mac

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Answer 2

M Reagan

Level 1

0 points

Dec 4, 2010 9:25 AM in response to Martin and His Mac

Same 'unnamed' face problem here. Starting over is *absolutely not an option*. I have over 11k photos I've worked on for 3 years. Apple needs to figure this out or 'starting over' will be switching to a more stable product from another company. It's disappointing they suggested that.

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Answer 3

Dec 4, 2010 6:32 PM in response to M Reagan

Let me throw my name on this thread as well. I just went through 4800 photos using the "Find Faces" function, to delete any face which I didn't want (i.e. strangers). While going through the list, I noticed that was getting a LOT of duplicates. After finally going through the whole list, when I exited iPhoto, and opened it back up, I immediately had 63 'unknown' faces. After going through the same list multiple times, I've finally realized that they're not going to go away.

Opening the images in iPhoto 11, and looking at the INFO tab, it show that I have "X" number of unknown faces in a given photo, but on the image itself, there are no squares around anyone's face. This is an original picture, so there's no concern of the changes being stuck in a previous version.

It seems that this is likely metadata related..hopefully, Apple releases a fix sooner rather than later.

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Answer 4

itsafire

Level 1

10 points

Dec 7, 2010 2:10 PM in response to KRDHarris

Same problems here. Count me in on (2) and (4).

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Answer 5

Sylvios

Level 1

0 points

Dec 7, 2010 3:46 PM in response to itsafire

Same problems. Iphoto 11 freezes my computer each time it opens.

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Answer 6

Dec 14, 2010 7:45 PM in response to KRDHarris

Ditto

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Answer 7

Dec 14, 2010 8:52 PM in response to KRDHarris

Found a possible solution in this thread by Old Toad.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2622820&tstart=0

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Answer 8

Dec 24, 2010 10:13 AM in response to KRDHarris

I just updated to iPhoto 9.1 and noticed that I had twenty photos in my Unnamed Faces smart folder, when I looked at the photos, I could find no unnamed faces in the photo. I realized that these were all cropped photos! When I "reverted to original", I found the unnamed face at the edge of the picture. I took care of the face and re-cropped the photo. The photo was eliminated from the smart folder.

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Answer 9

May 29, 2011 7:33 AM in response to KRDHarris

I tried for the longest time to find a way to fix this. Did all the steps outlined everywhere, still had pictures with "unnamed faces" but no box in the photo for me to either delete or identify the person. For some, the cropping was the issue and the "face" was in the cropped area. I tried the rebuild and nothing.

The only way I found to do it was to export all the photos with this "bug" in them using "current" as Kind, then imported them back in. It meant reidentifying people in those photos but it was quicker than the alternatives. Now, did it fix all the problems...of course not. still had a few with faces identified with no faces in the picture, had to do a "detect missing faces" on the photo and finally the spot where iPhoto thought there was a face appeared (or the same spots reappeared after x'ing them out before).

I'm not sure if "current" as Kind was required during the export, perhaps "original" would have worked but I didn't mind losing the original as with most of my pictures, current and original were identical.

Thanks and good luck.

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Answer 10

Jun 2, 2011 7:21 PM in response to KRDHarris

I have the same exact problem. I've sent many bug reports to Apple at http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphoto.html.

Please, do it too.

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Answer 11

Jun 3, 2011 2:35 PM in response to Martin and His Mac

We upgraded to IPhoto11 have had problems also. I have faces showing up in events. I never put any of these people into the face recognition. In some events I might have 50 or more faces. I am also having problems with the exclamation point grey box when I try to bring a picture up. We have contacted Apple. We thought it had been taken care of but the problem is back. Any advice?

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Answer 12

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,242 points

Jun 3, 2011 3:54 PM in response to gregfromhometown

The faces turn up in Events when someone accidentally imports the Library to another one

The ! turns up when iPhoto loses the connection between the thumbnail in the iPhoto Window and the file it represents.

Option 1

Back Up and try rebuild the library: hold down the command and option (or alt) keys while launching iPhoto. Use the resulting dialogue to rebuild. Choose to Rebuild iPhoto Library Database from automatic backup.

If that fails:

Option 2

Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. This will create a new library based on data in the albumdata.xml file. Not everything will be brought over - no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your albums and keywords back.

Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one. .

Regards

TD

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Answer 13

Old Toad

Level 10

207,223 points

Jun 3, 2011 7:23 PM in response to MUSEcogit

Definitely do as MUSEcogit recommends. The more reports Apple gets the more likely they'll take it seriously and we'll see a fix in the next update or two.

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Answer 14

madjoew

Level 1

4 points

Jul 7, 2011 4:01 AM in response to Mike Mikovsky

Hi,

So I have the same issue of faces being re-recognised. I have found a solution, however I only had 3 'stuck' photos so the procedure is still not clear. I think the answer is...

Make sure View-Hidden Photos is NOT checked

Go to the photo and open the Info Tab

Add a face (don't bother naming it)

Remove the face

Right Click - Hide

You will notice it now shows 0 of xxx and the photo info dissappears

Go to next photo

View-Hidden Photos (true)

Go back a photo (to your problem photo)

The 'Unnamed' face now has a box you can name it!!!!

Right Click-Unhide

View-Hidden Photos (false)

On one of my 3 photos it originally had only 1 face, then after the above it detected 2. So something about adding a manual face, removing it then hiding/unhiding the photo makes it reprocess the facial recognition.

If anyone can play around with the above who has a few more stuck faces and make it a more definitive procedure I'm sure many people would appreciate it!

Thanks!!!

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Answer 15

BeaconMI

Level 1

5 points

Oct 13, 2011 5:04 AM in response to KRDHarris

i'll add my name to this as well, i'm in the same boat. I rebuilt my MBP and reloaded iPhoto from my backup, by importing the library. It turned my 10K photos into over 150K photos and i've had to go in one at at time and clean all the dups, remove the bad faces association and add in the missing geotaging.

I can't remember ever having this many issues using Picasa. I like iPhoto and the nice bells n whistles but sersiously, who at Apple tests this stuff. I can't believe we are doing anything different from the other millions of apple users.

Good Luck All

-S

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