Iphoto 11 -How to turn off faces?

Why don't you take responsibility for it?

iPhoto Menu -> Provide iPhoto Feedback

Sure. Give me the email to the one responsible, and I will send him/ her a note.

Got to lean to read -

Why don't you take responsibility for it?

iPhoto Menu -> Provide iPhoto Feedback

LN

Got other things to do, and Lopezio solved my urgent problem 😝

Thank you very much for solving this. And actually answering the OP question.

iPhoto Menu -> Provide iPhoto Feedback

Thanks, I just did. I hope everyone else annoyed by this does so as well, even though the command-line "fix" seems to work ok. Others seem to think that Apple is immune to customer feedback, and iPhoto "is what it is" take it or leave it. I find that disheartening and a bit odd, but we'll see. If it realy is a general Apple philosophy not to provide basic feature config (on/off) that's news to me, and I hope it's simply not true.

Kudos, the cli solution is very helpful and is in line with the OP was hoping for.

There is a privacy issue with this particular function and not being able to turn it off is discomforting.

Another way of handling it, is to freeze the version (e.g. by going back to an earlier version from a backup) and stopping any update-connections using the appropriate tools. But this is not recommended, as there might always be a necessary security update, too.

I did the time-warp, as iPhoto '08 is doing all I need. This way, there is no need to drop iPhoto at all, but the trade-off is to loose any wished for new functinalities (I did not see any that I needed).

Interesting approach! But be careful, I know some prior version of iPhoto kept everything in one (huge) opaque file on disk and "managed" everything itself -- including managing to lose a bunch of my pictures once, at random, and it was a huge pain to reconstruct from backups. More recently all the pics (Masters, edits, etc.) are kept in a very nice folder hiearchy of regular disk files (JPGs etc.) which makes me a lot more comfortable, and allows general read-only access etc. Not sure '08 is set up that way, I'd check. Apple doesn't just add new features you don't need, they also fix a lot of actual problems, don't forget. (Like realizing that the OS already has a thoroughly debugged file system.) And use iPhoto Menu -> Provide iPhoto Feedback, just takes a minute!

There is no privacy issue with Faces. If you don't supply names then there is no data to be accessed.

rtminner:

For more on iPhoto and file management see this User Tip:

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6361

Thanks, nice write-up. I use Grand Perspective to check disk usage, iPhoto Library is one big (huge) box, didn't realize it's always been file system underneath, good to know. Definititely Managed with iPhoto, didn't mean to suggest otherwise.

lopezio I followed everything exactly and it worked the very first time. Thank you very much for clear instructions and steps 🙂

Greetings, I would like to please learn how to turn OFF the "faces" function - it is draining my CPU and I am out of traveling out of the country - is there any way other than having to download another photo program?

Aperture was mentioned earlier but costs $70.

I tried the "applications > utilities > terminal" instructions but that did not work on iphoto11 (as mentioned in other posts)

A poster called lopezio claims the following will do the job:

This is how you can disable (turn off) Face detection, without deleting faces found so far (just in case you want to restart processing at another time):

1. Quit iPhoto

2. Open Terminal Application (Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app)

3. Type the following (exactly as is):

defaults write com.apple.iPhoto PKFaceDetectionEnabled 0

(then return)

4. - Start iPhoto - Faces stops getting on your nerves...

If you ever need to re-enable faces, just do the same again and replace the 0 with 1.

I've not tested this so I'd offer a significant warning to back up first and even if it does work then to be wary if you're updating or upgrading as it may have an impact there too.

What definitely works, and safely, is to upgrade to Aperture as that has an option to disable faces. Pay more get more options.

Thank you big time for this!

I backed up before making this change and it worked like a charm! Thank you for the suggestion. It has made my iPhoto function much more efficiently. Thanks again!