Iphoto 11 -How to turn off faces?

What you typed 18 months ago helped nobody then and it's helping nobody now. Please post more like Lopezio instead of just telling people "pay more and get more options". Most people, including myself, are first time users and will probably never log on here again until another issue crops up. It's frustrating having to weed through posts like yours to find an actual solution to a problem.

I'm sure there's not a single thread in this community without you popping up in it. Why not try contributing on a technical level instead of insulting everyone's intelligence with sarcastic remarks.

Have a nice day.

Amusing. You complain about having to "weed through" posts like mine and suggest I try contributing on a technical level, and yet your two posts add exactly zero to the sum of knowledge here. What I typed 18 months ago was the answer at the time. It might not have been the answer hoped for, but it was the answer. And yes, I post a lot on this forum. You may notice that right now I have some 123,000 reputation points. That means that some 12,300+ people at least have take the time to acknowledge my assistance so I'm strangely comfortable with my role here. But you didn't answer my question: how come you haven't commented on all the other threads, the more recent ones? So, again, what was your point? What were you hoping to achieve?

honestly don't have time to waste fidgeting to find features that don't exist.

I just think that by default it should not search for face recognition in my photos, out of principle.

I compliment you on your success with reputation (points) .

Sir, I don't know who you are, or how you knew how to turn off faces in iPhoto, but I salute you.

I typed in what you instructed (and I've never even opened that terminal thing before), and it worked the very first time.

You have saved me from this plague. I'm a teacher, and I take class photos all the time.

You have no idea how many faces were being "faced" by iphoto for every picture I had taken. Minimum 30 kids in each shot.

I repeat, you have saved me, and I am forever indebted to you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Start of solution:

I did some digging in the prefs of iPhoto and found out the following. 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.

Greetings,

lopezio

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WOW, 16 "Likes" to your post! Thank you for fixing that giant bug in iPhoto.

Now if you can just figure out how to put Keywords underneath each image as the earlier (better) versions of iPhoto did.

The Terminal command posted previously didn't work for me, unfortunately.

But I figured out another simple solution, that doesn't actually turn off Faces,

but that does stop the annoying "Unnamed" bubbles from popping up all over your photos - which is all I needed:

1. Close iPhoto, then right-Click "iPhoto" app icon and "Show Package Contents"

2. Browse to "Contents/Resources" and look for the following files:

face-tag-BG.tiff

face-tag-BG@2x.tiff

face-tag-clear-N.tiff

face-tag-clear-N@2x.tiff

face-tag-clear-P.tiff

face-tag-clear-P@2x.tiff

face-tag-textField.tiff

face-tag-textField@2x.tiff

(The "face-tag" files are the individual parts that make up the annoying "Unnamed" Tags/Bubbles which are overlayed on your pics.)

3. Make a Backup copy of these files in case anything goes wrong:

Hold "Alt" while dragging the files to a new folder on your Desktop (Call it "Original Files" or similar...).

4. Duplicate the folder you just created and name it "Modified Files"

5. In "Modified Files", open each of the TIFF files individually in the "Preview" App (Strangely, Photoshop didn't work for me)

6. In Preview, for each file:

- Select all (CMD-A)

- Press "Delete" to delete the graphics

- Save (CMD-S)

7. Copy the modified files back into the iPhoto "Contents/Resources" folder where they came from.

You wil be asked to enter your Admin-Password for this.

8. Open iPhoto,then open any Photo with a face (or a group photo) and see it in it's full glory, without Face-Tags overlayed on the pic.

(If anything went wrong, just close iPhoto and copy the files from your "Original Files" folder back into Contents/Resources.)

Basically iPhoto still continues to do what it did before, but as all the "Face-Tag" graphics are empty now, you won't see any of it.

I've been annoyed by this for over a year (especially when looking at a group or party photo) and just signed up here to post this, so I hope this helps others as well!

(No guarantee if anything goes wrong!!)

That is a rather drastic measure to disable the face-name overlay.

I'd like to add a caution to make a backup copy of the iPhoto application, before anybody tries to do the same. It is so easy to accidentally corrupt an application when modifying the application bundle.

You will have to do this edit over and over again, when you reinstall or update iPhoto.

An easier workaround to see the photos without faces-bubbles overlay, is to click the "Edit" button and browse the photos in "Edit" mode. Use the arrow keys to step the photos. No bubbles are shown in this mode.

Or, even easier, just collapse the Faces tab in the Info Pane:

And with the Faces tab collapsed:

Problem is, I had no idea iphoto had this problem until it was already a problem w/no way to fix it. Please explain how I am supposed to export all the photos I have in iphoto WITHOUT exporting ANY thumbs so that I can use my free will NOT to use iphoto anymore!

Please explain how I am supposed to export all the photos I have in iphoto WITHOUT exporting ANY thumbs so that I can use my free will NOT to use iphoto anymore!

To export photos from iPhoto select the photos in iPhoto and use the command "File > Export > Version/Original". This will let you export the photos either as the originals or as edited versions. Save them to a folder on the Desktop.

Hey I did that feedback thing you told about, no it didn't help my cpu, and no it didn't stop iPhoto from being useless in regards to face recognition mandatory feature.

It's a shame that your only options are to either buy Aperture or submit feedback, at the very least you could provide a good suggestion why this feature should be on?!?!

I have the app I need to do all I want with my photos in terms of editing, I just need a library to check, organise my photos, faster than loading RAW pictures. It's not Aperture. It's just unfortunate that my app of choice doesn't have a library feature, it would prevent me from having to write here.

By the way I had a look at your iPhoto and file management... Reference Library all the way, but hey I'm a noob that won't trust +30000 RAW photos in just one huge database to call it a library that tries to find faces on landscapes.

Now, getting on my feet and tell you something you should be saying too for starters, In My Humble Opinion:

In My Humble Opinion, Face recognition is useless, I did my feedback on your suggestion, lets just hope...

In My Humble Opinion, Managed Library is just a marketing scheme into Aperture, so it seems it's working for you...

In My Humble Opinion, Managed Library presents a huge data loss risk, professionally and personally speaking, here is what I do, In my humble opinion, I have a single reference library, I manage my own files, they are not all in the same drive, some of my most favourite photos are even duplicated in separate hard drives, my own files, not multiple "managed libraries" like one could advise, just the files I want/love/need/whatever, call me a noob, i prefer to keep my work on my hands.

In My Humble Opinion my feedback on iPhoto was in favour of an issue around face smart album feature, allowing users to turn it off it's way to simple to call it a request for enhancement feedback, like what you can do with "places smart album"? 😉.

Maybe I'll try that command-line trick while feedback doesn't get any reply...if any.

Cheers

In My Humble Opinion, Face recognition is useless, I did my feedback on your suggestion, lets just hope...

Well done. Pointless, of course, as iPhoto is no longer in development.

In My Humble Opinion, Managed Library is just a marketing scheme into Aperture, so it seems it's working for you...

Well I won't pretend to be humble, but that's a profoundly clueless remark. Oh, and Aperture isn't in development any more either.

In My Humble Opinion, Managed Library presents a huge data loss risk, professionally and personally speaking, here is what I do, In my humble opinion, I have a single reference library, I manage my own files, they are not all in the same drive, some of my most favourite photos are even duplicated in separate hard drives, my own files, not multiple "managed libraries" like one could advise, just the files I want/love/need/whatever, call me a noob, i prefer to keep my work on my hands.

Okay then noob. Zero data loss risk, absolutely zero risk that is not also present in a Referenced system. It just stores the files in the same Finder that you are. Good luck if you ever change the path to any of those files, then.

Hi Terence,

So it seems, I was searching for a solution for a discontinued product line, I am new to the Mac world and products let's say from the 26th to be clear.

In terms of software, thank you, I'm not using it anymore, still looking for a good photo catalog app for Mac anyway.

About reference over managed, if that's still a subject to you, I don't see any "Zero data loss risk" in my argument, and if you read it more carefully, I just mentioned what I try to do to minimise it, you know that, I know that too, my point over that was simply managed library corruption represents real data loss where has in referenced, if the library gets corrupted, your files might not be, I not talking about hardware failure.

Any way you might be right from the first reply statement you did, it's pointless to discuss things over iPhoto or even Aperture since they are no longer in development, so you say.

Cheers

Any way you might be right from the first reply statement you did, it's pointless to discuss things over iPhoto or even Aperture since they are no longer in development, so you say.

As long as we do nat have a new native Apple application to manage iPhoto Libraries with at least the functionality of iPhoto we are stuck with iPhoto or Aperture. Apple should ensure, that these applications are working correctly with the current MacOS X version. The integration of my photo library software with MacOS X and other Apple applications is very important to me.

I did the terminal thing which worked perfectly. Well done that man but i was left with 10,0000+ thumbnail faces left in my library. So i went into package contents inside iphoto using finder and searched face0 then from that search checked there were not any originals starting with face0 in their original name, to which there were two. Select all, minus those two and delete. Then same again, search iphoto face1, face2 etc then delete. I am now thumbnail free. Granted you may lose a photo if by chance it has face1 etc within the original name but i was willing in the unlikely chance to lose a couple for the greater good. Iphoto is running like a dream. Back up before attempting this and do at your own peril. It has worked for me that is all i know.

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