Clicking to confirm doesn't actually confirm

I found 7 unconfirmed faces in my library with the the same problem as you described.

Here is my solution:

I did search my library in which event these pictures with unconfirmed faces are available. I saw that each of these 7 pics were available twice in the events. So i deleted each of the "copy", empty the trashcan, restarted iPhoto and did check faces for unconfirmed faces. I confirmed faces and from thois point everything worked fine.

Why did i have copies of these pics? The reason could be, that I use Photoshop Elements ( V.6), as an external editor and every time i edit an photo and save it, an add. copy will be saved instead of overwriting the old photo. This does happen since iPhoto V.11 as i remember.

Please don't forget to save your library first, before you delete any of you pics!

Hope this will help.

I've experienced this problem but may have found the root of the issue - at least for me.

Possible Fix For New Imports

I noticed the images that were not allowing me to confirm a face had a duplicate name. My camera names files DSC_XXXX where XXXX is a four digit number. Well, I take a lot of photos and that number rolled over. Thus images I was now importing from 2011 had an identical file name from an image I shot back in 2006!

On a recent batch of photos, I did a batch rename of the files so they had a unique name. I did this by incorporating the date/time into the file name. After importing these into iPhoto I was able to use the confirm button to assign a name.

Be sure you are importing unique file names - this just might prevent the problem from happening in the future. To fix existing.

For existing files within the iphoto database? Not sure. I guess you could export them, delete them from your library, and reimport with a new names. Or, simply visit each image individually and assign faces.

Hope this helps some of you.

*** Right-Click "Name" Also Broken !

Try the right-clicking on a problematic face that does not stick, you should see three options "Confirm", "Reject", and "Name". Check and see if the third option "Name" is enabled as usual, or instead disabled/dimmed. It seems in my case that the problem faces will have the "Name" option disabled/dimmed. So this can at least tell you which face confirmations will not stick ahead of time.

==> That is, it seems that affected photos will also have a disabled right-click "Name" option in the "Confirm Additional Faces" area. This is interesting, whatever problem is causing the "click to confirm" action to not stick is also causing the right-click "Name" option to be disabled, again only for these affected photos, so in a sense iPhoto is already 'aware' of the problem, wish Apple/iPhoto could detect and fix it.

I have found confirming faces a problem if a face has been "tagged" in facebook. On my home computer, I have several family members listed with their first names only, but they have tagged one another in facebook so my computer seems a little confused. I have been able to go into specific events and identify them individually. This seems to fix the few straggling photos. I am planning to figure out how to "unhook" facebook to my computer so I can decide which pictures to post. I wasn't aware that when I confirmed faces, it was posting them.

To add my own information: This happened with a single photo that I had shared to Facebook. (I have shared many other photos to Facebook without the same issue.) The photo had been shared to Facebook from my phone before synching with iPhoto.

I did some digging around in the file system and found one "master", two "previews", and two "thumbnails" of the problematic photo. There were no permissions problems, and everything seemed to have the appropriate extended attributes. Duplication seemed to be the only issue.

I solved the problem by hunting down the photo in iPhoto, checking its information, and explicitly removing any detected faces, which I re-add manually. When I next auto-detected faces, the photo was no longer a problem. The duplicate files remained in my iPhoto library, however. I don't know whether this is a problem or even errant behavior. Attempting to "reveal the modified file" from within iPhoto (from the File menu) showed the same copy both before and after the fix.

I don't know why the problem occurs, but I know what the problem is. When Info is shown, the name shows up with the actual photo, but does not appear in the list of names in the Info Panel (see attached photo). You have to find each photo that won't bulk confirm, delete the face name from the photo and manually add the face back in. Make sure that after you add the name back in, it shows up in the Info Panel. The photo shows the problem before I manually deleted the face name and added it back in. I was able to solve 29 photos with this method. If you have asked iPhoto to Look for Missing Faces, it may not let you manually add faces until it completes the search.

I hope you find this helpful.

Hi David

Thats the exact same behaviour im experienceing. Its a real pain to manualy track down the photos and manually remove and read the faulty faces tag.

I did a database rebuild and that didnt work either.

Very annoying. Apple needs to either make this 100% robust or give people the tools necessary to track down and easially fix the inconsistencies

Regards Mark

Uh, Apple isn't here. This is a user to user forum. If you want to report a problem or requrest a feature addition to Apple contact Apple via http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphoto.html.

OT

Uh we know that,

but being a user forum, hosted you know with an apple url, by apple ,probably on their infrastructure , and being a customer foccused company an all they woudl be regularly scanning their forums for the user mood. Where as the feedback optons which i have used have to not resulted in any use full improvements to their products ;-)

but being a user forum, hosted you know with an apple url, by apple ,probably on their infrastructure , and being a customer foccused company an all they woudl be regularly scanning their forums for the user mood.

Read the Terms of Use. They don't promise to read anything here.

THere are very few garantees or promises in life, all you can do it hope that sometimes you get pleasantly surprised ;-)

Same problem..It bugs me. I brougjt it to Genius bar at the apple store and rebuilt my library. It still doesn't work. Maybe they need an updated version of IPhoto. I have the latest one and it doesn't work properly. Even the genius couldn't figure it out. Not their fault thoiugh.

Have you tried as a test launching iPhoto with the Option key held down and creating a new, test library. Import some photos and test to see if the same problem persists. Does it?

Hi all, think I may have the answer.

Reading back through the posts, its clear that there is a common link between duplicating photos and tagging not 'sticking'.

In my case, I checked all the faces that would not accept tags, and sure enough they are the exact same pics that I have uploaded to facebook and tagged in facebook.

In iPhoto, the name appears along with the box containing the face, but crucially the name tag in the info pane is blank. According to iPhoto there is no name associated with the image.

I went into my facebook folder (my name under the WEB heading in the left hand pane) and deleted the tag in the photo, and sure enough the problem was resolved!

Hope this helps others too.

Andy.