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

You only had one issue, and it was User Error:

I rebuilt my MBP and reloaded iPhoto from my backup, by importing the library.

That was you did that, not iPhoto.

Never import one Library to another. Every version and thumbnail is imported like a distinct photo, you lose all your Albums, Keywords etc., the link between Original and Previews is destroyed, the non-destructive editing feature is ruined and so on. In summary: it's mess.

To restore all you had to do was put the Library back in the Pictures Folder and launch iPhoto.

Regards

TD

you are correct A MESS is putting it lightly. The oginal problem that caused me to go that direction was that iPhoto became unresponsive when i tried to open it, the little point just spun and spun and spun and would never open. So i tried using the rebuild library option onn iPhoto and day's went buy and the little pointer justs spin and spin and spin. So, as a last option I created a new library and did the import.

what I found was the duplication and loss of meta-data that you spoke of, and i found out how bad iPhoto does at mass maintenance large number of photos - like removing unnamed tag from an entire event, i never thought about creating a smart group, but from reading the posts above it doesn't sound like that was working well.

The scanning of faces and giving suggestions of name to faces doesn't seem to be very consistent either.

I also found delete large number of photos from trash was also a problem, i can delete 5K photos ok, but when i tried 15K or 30K (all those dups) iphoto would just hang, and the little pointer would just spin and spin and spin

thanks for the reply though

You shouldn't try and save this library.

Trash it and recover the one form Time Machine again. Then if it hangs:

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

I only just upgraded to iPhoto 11 and had not previously made much use of faces until now. I find that, when I create a smart album to display Unnamed Faces, and I start going through them to update or correct that info, I occasionally experience the situation where the photo remains in the smart album after seemingly naming or deleting all faces. Sometimes, if I go back to the photo I find that some of the faces I deleted (ignored) have returned and I have to click the x again. That usually solves it. However, 1 in 8 photos remain even after all faces have been named or accounted for.

In that situation, I find that if I delete the smart album, then create a new one with the same criteria (Face is unnamed), the new collection does NOT contain the photos that remained before.

I will note however that after going through this procedure a few times...there are still 2 photos (out of about 1200 that I processed) that still show up in the Faces unnamed smart album even though there are no unnamed faces in the photo. I don't know why these two photos are the only ones still showing up. I can find no explanation that fits (the idea above about cropped photos doesn't apply, as these have never been cropped).

I was noticing this problem as i made my unnamed folder there were a few faces and then extra unnamed faces that didnt show a box to name in the picture. I found that when you are in the photo under info and you go to detect missing faces it will reset the faces in the single picture and the extra faces will dissapear and leave you with the ones you want to name and then it will finally leave the folder 🙂...

Just adding my name to the list. I'm also having problems with incorrect photo/face counts.

In response to KRDHarris point (1) Photos in my Unnamed Faces smart folder (Face-is-unnamed) that show no unnamed faces

I Had the same problem and I think I came up with a fix which worked for me if you'd like to give it a go.

From the faces info bar I simpily added another face and named it someone who wasn't in the photo.

On both photos I did this with (the two that were stuck in the "smart" album) the new face I added disapeared and the photo vanished from the album.

Can't test it any more as I only had 2 photos stuck but give it a try.

Your solution is similar to mine posted earlier. It must be something about adding a manual face which kicks it out of the invisible unnamed face situation. Knowing this, hopefully will always be able to work around this issue now!

I've not had the problem since updating to Lion and latest iPhoto though btw.

This absolutely works. It's absolutely insane that we should have to do this, but it works.

Wow, actually, I just discovered the easy fix. In my case, some of the photos had been edited in some way (mostly cropped, some straightened, etc). Reverting to the original showed the "unnamed" box.

EDIT: Turns out this worked for like half my pics, but many others had never been edited and therefore remain unfixed. So stupid.

Same issues here. I had my file corrupt and had to rebuild by Library through Iphoto Manager. Then None of my Faces thumbnails came through. In addition, it doesn't seem to want to recognize any faces in new photos. Definately problematic. Tried about 5 of the support community fixes. The Library no longer is showing inconsistencies but, the face recognition is blown.

Reverting to original worked for me on all 80+ of my photos. It displayed the unnamed face and I was either able to delete or select a name from my catalog.

Message was edited by: Dave Bruno

Just thought I'd share what I found to work for me (for not being able to see the 'unamed' face).

I was able to flag the photo (or photos) that had this problem, then go to the flagged photos and unflag them. This seemed to either remove the unamed face or show the unamed face box.

This is simlar to the other posts of adding and them removing a new face, but maybe a little bit faster.

-j

I just did this. Did absolutely nothing for me.

Same issue here.

I discovered that if you close iPhoto and delete the com.apple.iPhoto.plist in your library file then restart iPhoto, & while in your unnamed faces album go to the top menu bar:- /photos/detect missing faces then

either

the photo will disappear (presumably because it has no missing faces)

or

an unnamed square will pop up, which can be deleted and then the photo disappears (because it now has no missing faces).

So this seems to be a problem of corrupt indexing somehow?

While this works it is a bit cumbersome on large Libraries. I wish there was a batch method of doing this.

Peter