Photos stubborn and confused with people

Question

Level 1

55 points

Photos stubborn and confused with people

Photos is extremely stubborn, and thinks that I and my son are the same person. There is absolutely nothing at all that I can do to convince Photos otherwise. This is what I tried:

Reset all "People" information and start again from scratch
Opening the "People" album of myself, and clicking "This is not Martin" on all pictures of my son. After 1-2 Minutes, the pictures are all back with my name on them.
Open a picture of my son and overwrite my name with his. Again, after a Minute Photos just replaces my manual override.
Find a photo of my son with "no name", and set his name. This does not train Photos to recognize him better.

Why does Photos overwrite my manual corrections? Why does it not remember "this is not Martin"? What's the point of allowing manual corrections, if they are silently destroyed shortly afterwards?

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017), macOS High Sierra (10.13.2)

Posted on Feb 18, 2018 9:38 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

200,531 points

Feb 18, 2018 11:40 AM in response to tinue

Are you using iCloud Photo Library? Then the named people may be syncing back from other devices.

I reset the People album on all there Macs, on my iPhone and iPad.

And then I started to name the people again, but at first only from the individual photos. When you assign a name to a stack of photos in the People album, do not look only at the key photo of the album, but open the album and check all photos inside, if the faces are all of the same person, before you assign a name. And I was careful to name the photos only on one device.

Reply

Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

200,531 points

Feb 19, 2018 10:10 AM in response to tinue

You may want to report this problem to Apple. Feedback - Photos - Apple

For me, it helped to completely start over. I deleted my Photos Library and let it download again from from iCloud, the Photos had to create a completely new library on my Mac. But that would be a bit drastic.

Reply

Answer 3

LarryHN

Level 10

106,142 points

Feb 18, 2018 10:02 AM in response to tinue

I've not seen this but maybe resetting the People data base would help - be sure to do a complete backup first -- : How to Reset the Named People Album in Photos on High Sierra and iOS 11

LN

Reply

Answer 4

tinue Author

Level 1

55 points

Feb 18, 2018 12:04 PM in response to léonie

Yes, I am using the iCloud Library. After resetting the persons, I checked on the iPhone and on the iPad: The "People" album was empty. I also have a Macbook, but this one was in standby. By now I also resetted the people there.

Whatever I do, my son gets deleted after a while. One time I could actually open my son's "People" view, and I could see about 10-15 pictures. I could even confirm a few additional photos. Five Minutes later, he was gone entirely. The pictures that had his name before were either back to my name, or had no name attached.

As a last resort I now deleted the photo library completely, and am currently re-downloading it from the cloud. I'll check tomorrow if this helped.

Reply

Answer 5

tinue Author

Level 1

55 points

Feb 19, 2018 10:03 AM in response to tinue

It's still not working. Re-downoad took all night. Then it started from scratch analyzing the pictures. After assigning some names, I see the reverse from before: All of my son's pictures, and all of my pictures get my son's name assigned. Again, there is nothing at all that I can do. After a few minutes, my entry in the "Persons" section gets removed, and all pictures get my son's name re-assigned.

Apparently I can't use this feature...

Reply