A new Bug or a New Feature? The "x" on Faces Circles is Missing in Photos on macOS 10.12.4

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A new Bug or a New Feature? The "x" on Faces Circles is Missing in Photos on macOS 10.12.4

Since the update to macOS 10.12.4 it is no longer possible to remove the faces circles from faces detected by Photos. The little "x" is only showing on the faces circles for faces we marked manually with "Add Face".

For example:

If we now want to get rid of detected faces of statues or strangers in a crowd, we can only hide the person, but no longer remove the detected faces circle.

Photos is still creating empty people thumbnails in the People album. When I open the people album for a person and remove all but one photo from this album using "xxx is not in this photo", then type a name into the textfield of the person on the last photo in the album, this will still create an empty faces thumbnail in the people album.

what are your experiences with the People album on macOS 10.12.4? Are you till seeing the x for faces detected automatically by Photos?

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015), macOS Sierra (10.12.4), 2,8 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB, 1TB

Posted on Mar 28, 2017 1:20 AM

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Answer 1

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manivo

Level 2

142 points

Mar 29, 2017 8:57 AM in response to léonie

I have also "lost" the X on the face circle. Saw this already in the beta versions of 10.12.4.

Very annoying, as it breaks my workflow of putting names on people.

I usually import photos, put them in an album (one for each event) and remove the unwanted photos.

Then wait 1 or two days for the scanning to do its job.

Then open the new album, and name all circles which haven't been named automatically.

I also add the missing circles (faces not recognized).

And I removed all unwanted faces with the X.

From time to time I go to the people albums and click "+" to check the recognized but not named faces.

There I see many empty/gray rectangles of the faces that I got ride of by clicking "X".

Between these I see some other to-be-named faces that I have missed above. I add them to the view of people albums and name them.

As I cannot remove faces anymore using "x", the view with the list of recognized but not named faces is not useless of for me. In this view, you cannot double-click on a face to see to which photo/context it below (often necessary to put a name on face of someone you do not see every day). I would have to add each face from this view to the view of people albums where you can check the associated photo, to either name or hide the face. I do not want to do this, as I would have to hide a lot, and I do not know what the consequences are. In the past hiding a people could hide a photo from memories. I think it is not the case anymore. But as long as Apple doesn't really know what "hide" is supposed to do, I rather not use it.

So I will still continue naming faces directly on photos.

But I won't use anymore the view of unnamed faces. And maybe it is better to avoid it. Whenever I open and browse it, my MBP starts to heat & fan aggressively until I close it again and wait for a few minutes.

The missing X is also a pity for another reason:

I constantly display names on the photos. As I cannot remove circles anymore, I have to live with the constant display of the "unnamed" circles.

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Answer 2

léonie Author

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194,685 points

Mar 29, 2017 8:53 AM in response to manivo

I would have to add each face from this view to the view of people albums where you can check the associated photo, to either name or hide the face. I do not want to do this, as I would have to hide a lot, and I do not know what the consequences are. In the past hiding a people could hide a photo from memories. I think it is not the case anymore. But as long as Apple doesn't really know what "hide" is supposed to do, I rather not use it.

Hiding is poorly documented in the Photos Help. If I hide all photos of a named person, it will produce an empty thumbnail in the people album.

If I hide a person, not the photos of a person, I'm not sure what will happen on the Mac. The iPad user Guide says: http://help.apple.com/ipad/10/#/iPada1053653

Hide and unhide people. Tap Albums, tap People, tap Select, tap the people you want to hide, then tap Hide. To unhide people, tap Show Hidden People, tap Select, tap people, then tap Unhide. Photos that contain hidden people don’t appear in Moments, Collections, Years, and Memories but are visible in albums.

But a similar paragraph is missing from the Photos for Mac Help.

The missing X is also a pity for another reason:

I constantly display names on the photos. As I cannot remove circles anymore, I have to live with the constant display of the "unnamed" circles.

Yes, that is creating a mess, if many people are shown on a photo.

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Answer 3

Mar 29, 2017 8:57 AM in response to léonie

I've lost this too. I've also noticed that i'm just getting blank (no face, no thumbnail) entries in the 'add people' screen on photos where I think in the past i've deleted the extra faces. I'm also seeing entries in the information panel for faces that have no circles around them (which may be ones i've deleted before). Are you seeing that too?

I did notice when trawling through the Photos.db file a while back that there were a lot of entries for faces that had been deleted so I would guess that there's a latent bug here somewhere that Apple is mitigating - mind you it could even be something to do with making it consistent with iOS as there's never been a way to remove automatically detected faces on the phones. The fact that some attention has been paid to Photos in this release makes me hopeful for the next major one!

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Answer 4

léonie Author

Level 10

194,685 points

Mar 29, 2017 8:57 AM in response to Flitter2009

I'm also seeing entries in the information panel for faces that have no circles around them (which may be ones i've deleted before). Are you seeing that too?

Yes, I'm having photos in some people albums with no Faces circles. But I am not sure about the history of these photos.

The fact that some attention has been paid to Photos in this release makes me hopeful for the next major one!

Yes! Some progress indeed!

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Answer 5

rftkrbs

Level 1

8 points

Apr 22, 2017 1:09 AM in response to léonie

I have same problem and I hope it will have fixed the next update.

And I have one more problem.

1. Face recognition was done.

2. I wrote the all faces I knew in the circles. (It was 7440 photos.)

3. I exported 7440 photos with metadatas to my external disk. (I haven't enough space in my Mac)

4. I reinstalled Sierra. (I don't want time machine back up. I want turn it into the first day.)

5. I have imported all photos from external disk to Photos.

And Photos is starting to face recognition again !!

Where is my names in the circles??

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Answer 6

léonie Author

Level 10

194,685 points

Apr 22, 2017 2:37 AM in response to rftkrbs

When you export the photos with metadata, the faces will be written to the keywords and reimported as keywords, but you will not see them below the Faces circles.

If you import all photos again to photos, the Face Detection will start all over and you have to name the faces again. It will be a little bit faster, because you can copy and paste the keywords to the faces names.

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Answer 7

rftkrbs

Level 1

8 points

Apr 22, 2017 4:26 AM in response to léonie

No it is not fast. It defines very few faces. I am writing again the names of the circles in almost all photos. I would rather use Photos than other programs but this is an important problem for me. Well, could you recommend me some useful programs for my photo archive?

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Answer 8

léonie Author

Level 10

194,685 points

Apr 22, 2017 7:08 AM in response to rftkrbs

No it is not fast. It defines very few faces.

It is easier to wait, until Photos has finished the faces scan. Then merge the faces albums albums of similar persons, until all photos of the same person are merged into one album. Only then assign the name to all photos of the same person at once, by assigning the name to the album, not individually below the faces circles.

But I do not understand why you did not just save the complete Photos Library to an external drive, instead of individual photos. If you need to temporarily remove photos from the Mac, save the library and copy it back later, not the photos. And if you want to reduce the number of photos to save storage, delete some photos from the library, after creating a backup copy.Then you do not have to go to the trouble of adding metadata again.

Well, could you recommend me some useful programs for my photo archive?

After I had to drop Aperture I could not find a replacement, I'm still searching.

I like what digiKam can do, but because it is not an Apple product, there are not always updates available, immediately when a new macOS comes out, so it is not reliable enough for me. For the time being, I am using Photos, because it is the only application supporting iCloud Photo Library.

I hope other, who tried Lightroom or Capture One can give you some more pointers.

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Answer 9

Apr 22, 2017 3:03 PM in response to léonie

I've tried Lightroom, it's incredibly functional but there are a couple of things still lacking from Adobe that I need before i'd move...

- There's no integrated import from Photos so you lose all of the face information when you migrate (pretty much as rftkrbs has)

- they have their own sync method but it's not a 'cloud backup' - photos are still stored as masters on the mac and originals don't go anywhere else (they use an 'optimised' format for transmission to mobile) so you need a second cloud backup to be safe

- no automatic import/export from iCloud or iOS photo library as you take new photos

- no 'memories' function or integration to screen saver/etc.

- the usual Adobe 'we know best and you need to learn how we do it' attitude to the UI rather than making things simple for the newbie

If all you're doing is processing photos then it's great - much more functional than Photos (especially in the latest release), but for me it didn't fit well with my overall setup and since my only issues with Photos is in the face recognition i'm happy to wait until it gets back to what we had with iPhoto at least.

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Answer 10

léonie Author

Level 10

194,685 points

Jun 14, 2017 12:16 AM in response to kwkiwi

Hi can you tell me how to hide the detected faces of people I don't know.

I'm unsure how to do this!!

It is a lot of work. I add the strangers to the People album using the "Add Person" button at the bottom of the People album. If the stranger appears several times, I merge the faces like for the people I want to name. Then I ctrl-click or right-click the merged album and use "Hide this person". sic ally I am dealing with the unwanted faces just like the faces of people I want to keep and finally hide them. And all this work does still not get rid of the unnamed circles of faces overlaid on the photos.

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Answer 11

Jul 9, 2017 3:07 AM in response to léonie

Hi ... I am just catching up on this thread ... so should all strangers be given the same name, maybe create a name called "stranger", and then keep merging everyone named "stranger" together so that there is only one person to hide in the People album? And is it correct to assume that while this will hide their face icon in People, the photo itself is still visible in all views (albums, years, memories, etc.)?

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Answer 12

léonie Author

Level 10

194,685 points

Jul 9, 2017 3:19 AM in response to TheFloridaGal

Hi ... I am just catching up on this thread ... so should all strangers be given the same name, maybe create a name called "stranger", and then keep merging everyone named "stranger" together so that there is only one person to hide in the People album? And is it correct to assume that while this will hide their face icon in People, the photo itself is still visible in all views (albums, years, memories, etc.)?

If you merge all detected faces of strangers into one person album, the automatic face recognition may no longer be able to recognize your friends and family automatically, because the face of the stranger will be similar to all people. I would send the stranger faces individually to the hidden person albums.

I would not invest too much work into organizing the People album, if you are planning to upgrade to High Sierra in the autumn. The upgrade will change the face recognition again considerably.

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Answer 13

Jan 4, 2018 2:16 PM in response to TheFloridaGal

That's what I do. I have one named Unknown, which just shows up at the end of the list. I don't hide it, it's easier to just drag the selected photos on top of that one and choose merge. Or if there is one person who appears in a bunch of new photos I'll click on their photo, then confirm additional photos for that one unknown person, and THEN merge them with unknown. Also, it's pretty easy to confirm additional photos for unknown.

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Answer 14

léonie Author

Level 10

194,685 points

Jan 5, 2018 2:10 AM in response to tanstaafl_42

The "Unknown" helps to get the unnamed faces out of the way and shorten the list of unnamed faces. But there is a high price to pay. It will mess up the automatic face recognition. Your unknown person will have an average face that is similar to many people, and Photos may be now recognizing the people you want to name as the "unknown" person and merge them automatically with that face. You need to check the stack of unknown faces continually, if it contains faces that should not be there.

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Answer 15

Jan 5, 2018 7:36 AM in response to léonie

Thanks for the head's up! It hadn't occurred to me it would do that and I will check it. I still think it's a worthwhile plan though. Otherwise Photos kept showing me the same 50 people who happened to be in a bunch of crowd shots over and over again when I try to identify other people. I wish Apple would add a "crowd" option where it could ignore everyone and just let you add faces, or only tag the ones it was sure about.

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