Issue with Face Detection in iPhoto '11

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Level 1

7 points

Issue with Face Detection in iPhoto '11

I have an iPhoto library with close to 20,000 photos, so as you can imagine there are LOTS of faces. A month or so ago I started to sift through and names to faces. A few weeks ago iPhoto said 'There are 10,000 unnamed faces in your library'. All of a sudden this has cleared and it says 'There are 0 unnamed faces in your library'.

This is very strange because there is definitely unnamed faces in the library, close to 10,000 of them. I know these are still unnames because when I click on a person, it says "Person may be in 350 additional photos".

Does any one have any idea how I can fix this?

Cheers,

Matt

MacBook Pro (13-inch Late 2011), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Jan 17, 2014 3:12 AM

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Answer 1

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,408 points

Jan 17, 2014 3:33 AM in response to melrick

iPhoto 11?

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 Repair Database. If that doesn't help, then try again, this time using Rebuild Database.

If that fails:

Option 2

Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. (In early versions of Library Manager it's the File -> Rebuild command. In later versions it's under the Library menu.)

This will create an entirely new library. It will then copy (or try to) your photos and all the associated metadata and versions to this new Library, and arrange it as close as it can to what you had in the damaged Library. It does this based on information it finds in the iPhoto sharing mechanism - but that means that things not shared won't be there, so no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your events, albums and keywords, faces and places 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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