Why does my iPhoto faces confirmation not work?

Question

Level 1

25 points

Why does my iPhoto faces confirmation not work?

Hey guys, I've been having trouble with confirming my iPhoto faces using the Faces feature.

When viewing the corkboard in iPhoto '11, I double-click on a face to see more photos of that person. At the bottom, it shows there are 14 unconfirmed faces, for example. When clicking the button to view those 14 photos, it shows the 14 photos just fine. They are all of that same person, so I drag to highlight them all and they are now marked green. I then click on the Done button to confirm the photos, and what happens next is what seems wrong... it does NOT add those 14 photos to the Faces album of that person, but proceeds to double the amount of unconfirmed faces by now saying there are 28 unconfirmed faces, yet when viewing those it only returns the original 14.

Anyone else having this issue? Perhaps a bug that I should report to Apple? Anything I can do to help fix it myself, perhaps some corruption in my iPhoto library? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance! :-)

Version of iPhoto '11 - 9.2.1

Version of Mac OS X - 10.7.3

Macbook @ 2.4GHz, Mac OS X (10.7.3)

Posted on Feb 29, 2012 8:20 PM

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Answer 1

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,260 points

Feb 29, 2012 10:47 PM in response to dustda01

As a Test:

Hold down the option (or alt) key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Create Library'

Import a few pics into this new, blank library. Is the Problem repeated there?

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Answer 2

dustda01 Author

Level 1

25 points

Mar 2, 2012 7:45 PM in response to Yer_Man

Hi Terence, thanks for your suggestion. I did as you suggested, and sure enough it seems to get them all and doesn't stay in a loop about faces it thinks are my own despite confirming them multiple times.

So now that we know it seems to behave correctly in a new library... what's next? Obviously I'd rather stay away from creating an entire new library if I can help it. There shouldn't be anything wrong with my current one, even though it seems there are some issues.

Perhaps I wait for an iPhoto update to squash the bug, and report it to Apple in case they aren't aware of it? Or is it a relatively easy transition between iPhoto libraries? (all I did for the suggestion was move over photos for one face and then confirmed them) What about it's integration with Facebook? I don't want a whole bunch of new updates for the hundreds of photos I have uploaded to Facebook via iPhoto either because it's in a new library or because it detects faces again. You know what I mean?

Thoughts?

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Answer 3

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,260 points

Mar 2, 2012 11:26 PM in response to dustda01

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 4

May 20, 2012 11:45 AM in response to Yer_Man

Terence,

I had the same issue, and tried your Option 1 (I have lots of books, so Option 2 is not acceptable)

Unfortunately, it didn't solve this problem and produced a new one - hundreds of my older pictures have lost

their orientation information and now need to be re-rotated.

Do you know a way to recover the previous orientation? (I suppose I could revert to my backup prior to

this, but I didn't notice the problem for a while, so this will be painful too)

thanks,

Aaron

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Answer 5

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,260 points

May 20, 2012 12:45 PM in response to AaronRoodman

Your options are to rebuild with Library Manager or to restore from back up, I'm afraid.

Regards

TD

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