Backing Up Photos Library with Faces

Question

Level 1

11 points

Backing Up Photos Library with Faces

Hello,

I needed to (clean) reinstall my Mac. I backed up my Photos Library (with iCloud Photo Library turned on) on an external drive. Then deleted everything and reinstalled my system. After putting back my Photos Library and turning on iCloud, all my 4000 photos started uploading (and duplicating) to iCloud even they have already been there. I had to stop this, delete my Photos Library backup and have all the photos downloaded from iCloud. That would have been okay if I didn't lose all my face tags (which I spent a lot of time with) So how should I do it next time when reinstalling my Mac?

Thank you for any tips.

Milan

iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3)

Posted on Feb 11, 2016 11:31 PM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

200,891 points

Feb 12, 2016 12:04 AM in response to milanprokop

Do it exactly as you have done the first time. Make a backup of your Photo Library on an external drive and copy that library back to restore it.

Photos will upload all photos again and compare to iCloud Photo Library. It will not recognize the restored library as the identical library it used before, but it uses a duplicate detection to prevent adding duplicates. This will take as long as the original upload.

If you start with a new, empty library the projects and faces thumbnails will be lost. (Use Photos and iCloud Photo Library on multiple Mac computers - Apple Support) But the restored library has searchable faces tags. You can still search for the faces you assigned previously and use them to recreate the faces thumbnails more quickly.

But wait, until the faces detection has been run on the photos downloaded from iCloud Photo Library.

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Answer 2

milanprokop Author

Level 1

11 points

Feb 12, 2016 12:22 AM in response to léonie

Thank you, thats helpful. Hopefully you're right and I won't have to delete over 4000 duplicates manually. I think Photos should tell the user whats going on. Because when user sees thousands of photos being uploaded and duplicated he panicks 🙂

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

200,891 points

Feb 12, 2016 12:41 AM in response to milanprokop

You can check this in the Console window. Launch the Console application from the Application > Utilities folder.

Type "Photomodel" into the search field.

The "Duplicate detection" messages will look like this in the Console window:

iCloud id uploading the library at the least provocation, for example after the library has been repaired. I had never duplicates after a new upload.

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