Photos does not detect/scan faces

Question

Level 1

25 points

Photos does not detect/scan faces

All,

It seems Photos does not recognize faces anymore. I have lots of pictures of close ups and groups where Photos does not show "unnamed" or a name to a face.

I have toggled "show names" on and off but no result. See example below; no names or unnamed shown although that feature is turned on.

Clicking on Persons does not show any unscanned pictures anymore.

I would understand that Faces does not recognize all, but even the obvious are skipped. From time to time there is a match, but in the majority of the pictures no faces are detected.

I know I can add them manually (I did) but that would take weeks/months as I have quite a large library.

Any ideas?

iMac, macOS Sierra (10.12.1)

Posted on Nov 24, 2016 12:02 PM

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Answer 1

LarryHN

Level 10

106,142 points

Nov 24, 2016 12:08 PM in response to philipz007

We can not see you so you have to provide information

What has changed since it worked? What version of the OS do you have? When you click on People does it show a scanning progress display and just go to People Thumbnails?

LN

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

200,813 points

Nov 24, 2016 12:11 PM in response to philipz007

Photos is scanning for faces and categories, when you are not using the Photos.app.

What are you seeing, when you open the People album? Does it still say "Scanning"?

I tested and imported the photo you posted, and Photos is not recognizing the two faces for this photo in my library as well..

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Answer 3

philipz007 Author

Level 1

25 points

Nov 24, 2016 12:15 PM in response to LarryHN

I copied my library from iPhoto on another Mac to my new iMac and chose it as the library for Photos. It did the conversion and for hours (days?) it showed the scanning progress. Now no scanning progress is seen anymore; I left my Mac on several nights so that it could potentially scan more in the background but it didn't.

When clicking on People it just shows the thumbnails. I tried to repair already but no success. When I add new pictures the face recognition mechanism stays below useful.

Is face recognition fairly accurate - I mean, should it detect at least that there are faces in pictures like I showed?

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Answer 4

Nov 24, 2016 12:25 PM in response to philipz007

Out of curiosity I tried too and found that Photos did recognise there were 2 faces. I wondered if it might be because I took a screenshot instead of using your photos so imported your photo too as a test but it recognised 2 faces again.

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Answer 5

philipz007 Author

Level 1

25 points

Nov 24, 2016 12:32 PM in response to philipz007

Interesting results - so in some libraries they get recognized as Faces, in others they don't.

I just tried the screenshot trick as well. It recognizes the faces in the screenshot but not in the original (I checked again). Weird... Not sure how to troubleshoot this?

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Answer 6

philipz007 Author

Level 1

25 points

Nov 24, 2016 12:37 PM in response to philipz007

Duplicating the pictures immediately shows the name tags on the duplicates - not on the originals. So I don't think this is about not being recognized - this is about not being scanned. Is there a way to force scanning again?

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Answer 7

léonie

Level 10

200,813 points

Nov 24, 2016 11:49 PM in response to philipz007

this is about not being scanned. Is there a way to force scanning again?

Photos scans the photo, when it is importing once. Their is no command to force the scan again. You would have to reimport the photo.

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