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User profile for user: Terry Mosher
Terry Mosher Author
User level: Level 1
11 points

Faces acting very buggy

I have 3.4.3 running on the latest iMac (2012, 27", 3.4 GHz i7) on 10.8.2. Aperture library is rather large (~28,000 pics, mostly RAW), it's about 280 GB.


First problem: When I click on Faces in the upper left, I get the corkboard - great. When I click on Show Unnamed Faces, I see unnamed pics. I select their names and then hit Hide Unnamed Faces. When I click Show Unnamed Faces, the same faces show up. Have repeated this many times, and the same pictures show up. It appears my selections are not being saved.


Second, there are some names that seem to cause Faces to hang up. For some reason, if the first letter is an M, I will type the M, aperature will add a second M, so it now reads MM, and when I try to edit the field, it just hangs. Can't click anywhere. Have to close Aperture and start over.


Third, it isn't doing a very good job at recognizing all faces in the pictures. These aren't the tough ones that I'm actually surprised when Aperture correctly recognizes a face, these are the easy ones: person looking right at the camera, no hats, glasses, or anything else.


Here's what I've done:


I've repaired permissions, repaired the library, and rebuilt the library several times.


I selected all photos and from the menu, selected Photos, Detect Missing Faces. It took several hours but finally finished.


After doing this, there is no change in how Aperture is behaving. Faces just seems to be really buggy.


Any help? Anything else I can try?


Thanks!


Terry

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Jan 26, 2013 1:30 PM

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13 replies
User profile for user: léonie
léonie
User level: Level 10
194,767 points

Jan 26, 2013 1:56 PM in response to Terry Mosher

First problem: When I click on Faces in the upper left, I get the corkboard - great. When I click on Show Unnamed Faces, I see unnamed pics. I select their names and then hit Hide Unnamed Faces. When I click Show Unnamed Faces, the same faces show up. Have repeated this many times, and the same pictures show up. It appears my selections are not being saved.

I am afraid, that is no bug. "Hide unnamed faces" will temporarily hide the unnamed face to get them out of the way, but will show them again, when you unhide them. If you want Aperture to ignore certain faces, press the "Skip" button. This will remove the images from the list of suggested faces.


Second, there are some names that seem to cause Faces to hang up. For some reason, if the first letter is an M, I will type the M, aperature will add a second M, so it now reads MM, and when I try to edit the field, it just hangs. Can't click anywhere. Have to close Aperture and start over.

I cannot reproduce that problem. Do you have a face in your "Faces" set called "MM" or a contact called "MM" in your Contacts? And no other name starting with "M" in the list of names known to Aperture? Are you using the "Limit suggestions to project" option?


Do you see the same "hanging" when working with Aperture from a different user account or working with a different, new Aperture library?


As to the recognition rate - I found that Aperture is getting better after seeing more faces.


Regards

Léonie

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User profile for user: Terry Mosher
Terry Mosher Author
User level: Level 1
11 points

Jan 26, 2013 2:44 PM in response to léonie

Thanks, Léonie


With the Hide/Show issue, I am clicking on either Skip, or I am assigning a name to each picture. They disappear as I work my way across. But the next time I got back into it by clicking Show Unnamed Faces, the same set of pictures is presented to me again, and I have to click skip or assign a name all over again. It's just not registering my selection it seems.


I think what happened is I made a mistake earlier and typed MM into one of the fields. Quickly went back and corrected it, but I think Aperture saved it as a valid choice, even though I have no contacts named MM.


I called Apple and am following their recommendations (many of which I had already done).


Use Aperture First Aid Tools (Repair Permissions, Repair Library, Rebuild Library)


Next they recommend restore from a vault or Time Machine Backup. But my vault is a bit out of date so I'm skipping that step.


Next they recommend deleting the user preferences (~/Library/Preferences. Remove the "com.apple.Aperture.plist" file.


I've done that and am playing around a bit and it appears to have made things better, but the M problem is still occurring.


Next they recommend that I move the User Presets (~/Library/Application Support/Aperture) and relaunch. I'll try that next.


Last they recommend to reinstall the software, which will be tough. I bought the original Aperature 1 on disk and have upgraded to 3.4.3, but my new iMac doesn't have an optical disk. Guess I'll tackle that one if I need to, but hoping I don't have to re-purchase Aperture from the App Store just because I don't have a 4-year old receipt.


Terry


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User profile for user: léonie
léonie
User level: Level 10
194,767 points

Jan 26, 2013 4:48 PM in response to Terry Mosher

Terry, have you tried to narrow down the problem a bit? If would be good to know, if the problem is system wide or caused by your user library or settings in your account.

  • To check, if your Aperture library has a corrupted faces database create a new, empty library and import some family pictures or so. Name some faces. Do they stay? If you do not have the same problem with a new library, then the problem is caused by a corruption in your library and reinstalling Aperture would not help.
  • To check, if settings in your account are problematic, log into your mac from a different user account and lauch Aperture there. If you can work with "Faces" without problems from a new account, but not from your own, your account has problematic setting, startup items, or something.
  • Only if you have the problem in all account, with all libraries, then reinstall.


Regards

Léonie

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User profile for user: léonie
léonie
User level: Level 10
194,767 points

Jan 27, 2013 2:04 AM in response to Terry Mosher

I've repaired it and rebuilt it. Where to next?


Terry,

have you done all three repairs? Including permissions?


Then the faces.db file in the Aperture library seems to be broken. If you have plenty of diskspace, try next to import your current Aperture library into a new Aperture library, that already contains at least one face (pick an image that is not in your current Aperture library to avoid merging). This will force Aperture to build a new faces.db.


To import your current library into a new one: Switch to the new library (File > Switch To Library) and in the new library use "File > Import > Library".

Importing might take some time plus extra disk space.


Regards

Léonie

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User profile for user: Terry Mosher
Terry Mosher Author
User level: Level 1
11 points

Jan 27, 2013 7:30 AM in response to léonie

Léonie,


Built a new library and did as you suggested. Put a single picture in the library and ran Faces on it. Then imported the old library. Took a couple of hours. When finished, it had all of the faces from the old library, and the same M problem exists.


Next will build a new account on the iMac and launch Aperture from that account. We'll see. This is very frustrating but I appreciate your help!


Terry

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User profile for user: léonie
léonie
User level: Level 10
194,767 points

Jan 27, 2013 7:49 AM in response to Terry Mosher

Terry,

If all fails, (try this only on a the new copy of your Aperture library! ) and make sure your backup is o.k. I had to do this, when I upgraded to Aperture 3.4.


  • Quit Aperture, log off and on again.
  • Select the Aperture library in the Finder and open the Library package by ctrl-clicking and selecting "Show Package Contents".
  • You will see several folders inside. Open the folder "Database", then "apdb". Inside this should be a file "Faces.db". Move this file to the Desktop.


Do you have a backup of your Aperture library, from a time, when Faces worked correctly? Then you could replace the "Faces.db" file by the one from your backed up library.


If no backup is available, close the folder and launch Aperture again. You should now have a library, that has all previously assigned faces missing (unless you had a backup of the "Faces.db"), but will hopefully allow you to assign faces, that will stay.


Regards

Léonie

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User profile for user: Terry Mosher
Terry Mosher Author
User level: Level 1
11 points

Jan 27, 2013 1:15 PM in response to léonie

Léonie,


Thank you so much for the help. Deleting the Faces.db worked. Yes, I have to start over again with tagging faces, but I would rather do that into a "clean" database of Faces than continue to suffer with an application that hangs at random moments (actually not all that random - all I had to do was type an "M"!)


Since I am doing this in a new library, the only thing that I have to recreate besides the faces are my Keyword Controls (not that hard). All other items (like my Import settings) came across when creating the new library.


I think I'm back in business and again, thank you. I should send you some Kinder Eggs as a token of my appreciation. Except Kinder Eggs are illegal in the US. 😟


Best regards,

Terry

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Faces acting very buggy

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