Faces listing picture as having a missing face, but there is none there

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.

I am a "little" late in replying because I just saw this question.

When I had a similar problem it turned out that in many photos, the same face had been found multiple times. Different instances of finding the face found slightly different parts of the image. The areas containing the face were sufficiently different for the finding algorithm to consider them different faces. However, the areas were sufficiently alike that they hid one another, depending on which was in front. In some cases both found faces had been assigned the same name. In other cases, one face had been assigned a name and the other was "unknown". If the named face is in front, the found face labeled "unknown" will be hidden. I suspect that is what you are seeing.

To identify such faces which have been found more than once, select a face, then use <TAB> to select a different face. Successive tabs rotate the selection through all faces. If a face has been found twice, each defining rectangle and associated name will be selected at different points in the tab progression. There are at least three possible ways to identify faces which have been found more than once. One way is if the same face has a different name assigned. A second way it to note that the face is selected at a different point in the succession as tab steps through all found faces. A third way is to note that the defining face rectangles covers a very slightly different part of the image.

If you determine that one of more faces has been detected more than once, the correction is to click the "x" to dismiss one of the duplicate found face rectangles. If the rectangles can be seen to enclose different parts of the face in the photo, choose to keep the rectangle which encloses a better example of the face.

For those still using iPhoto I hope this information can be off use, even after this long. I do not know if faces hide behind one another in Photos.

It is still the same in Photos for Mac. If a photo is showing people in a crowd, you get overlapping name fields, that can hide each other.

And your fix to use the "Tab" key to step the unnamed faces is working beautifully in Photos 1.5!

Thanks, léonie, for letting everyone know this is still useful. In Photos I have not seen so many problems with duplicate or hidden found faces as in iPhoto. This may be because Photos won't allow "unnamed faces" as a Smart Album rule, which can make finding them difficult.

Thanks, léonie, for letting everyone know this is still useful. In Photos I have not seen so many problems with duplicate or hidden found faces as in iPhoto. This may be because Photos won't allow "unnamed faces" as a Smart Album rule, which can make finding them difficult.