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Missing and inconsistent face positions

I have just converted a photo library from iPhoto 9.6.1 to Photos 3.0 on a Mac running High Sierra, and then moved it to a Mac running Big Sur and opened it with Photos 6.0. It says "Updating Library..." for a time, then finishes. I've found two kinds of problems with the updated library: first, some faces that I'd identified and labeled are no longer identified or labeled. Second, some faces that still are identified and labeled show an inconsistent location — the face label in a particular photo may appear in the correct position in the photo some of the time, and in an incorrect position in the same photo when I look at it a different time. Neither problem appears in the Photos 3.0 version of the library on the Mac running High Sierra.


I have tried repairing the library with Photos 6.0 and it makes no difference. My libraries are all stored locally, not on iCloud.


I still have the photo library from Photos 3.0 running on High Sierra. How can I move it to Photos 6.0 running on Big Sur without losing any of the identified and labeled faces? And how can I get Photos to consistently show face labels in the correct position?


MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.3

Posted on May 14, 2021 1:27 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 15, 2021 1:09 AM

When you upgrade from an older Photos version to a newer Photos version the upgrade usually is using a new, improved face detection and face recognition. This requires a completely new faces scan.

Initially, the People album may be empty after an upgrade, but after a few days most of the faces should come back. Also, with a new, different face detection algorithm the position of some faces may be slightly shifted and the set of recognised faces may be different. Some faces may be missing, some additional faces may be recognised. For the slightly shifted faces and additionally recognised faces, Photos may be waiting for you to confirm the names, after the new faces scan has finished. This can take several days. For my library with 50000 photos it took two weeks.

  • Open the album for each person in the People album and go to the bottom of the album. Click "Confirm additional faces".
  • If Photos alerts you, that more names have been added than you confirmed, check the album for the person carefully, if photos has made a mistake and confused the faces of two people.
  • If Photos is showing you wrong faces during the "Confirm" dialog, check the albums for the mismatches as well.

Photos 6 may not be able to use all previously assigned names. We are no longer allowed to assign the same name to two different faces in the same photo. So named faces may be missing, if you have a photo with two faces and Photos has used the name of a person for the wrong face. Sometimes some faces will be missing after an upgrade, that I have added manually.


When I migrated my libraries from iPhoto to Aperture I started to assign keywords with the name of the person in addition to naming the faces. Also I made screenshots of the people album to remember the original names I assigned. I continued this practice, when migrating to photos. Whenever I assign a name to a face, I am adding the name as the keyword. This is saving the assigned names across system upgrades and it helps a lot in Photos. It is not possible to see the full name of a person in the Info, unless we write the name to other metadata fields. The keywords help to check the faces after the upgrade with a smart album and to correct mistakes quickly:

For example - this smart album will help me to find all photos of a person, where Photos did not yet restore the person to its People album:


Checking with the opposite rules:

Keyword is not "Puppe: Tux" and Person is "Puppe: Tux" will tell you, if faces have become labelled as Tux, that are not Tux and need checking.


Here is more on using keywords to save the faces during an upgrade: How to use Keywords to Back Up the Named … - Apple Community


Using iCloud Photos can help a bit, to save the "People" album when upgrading, as the recent versions of Photos are syncing named faces with iCloud. But it can complicate things, if we have added faces manually on several devices and the circles of the manually added faces are in slightly different positions.

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3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 15, 2021 1:09 AM in response to Tim.Leonard

When you upgrade from an older Photos version to a newer Photos version the upgrade usually is using a new, improved face detection and face recognition. This requires a completely new faces scan.

Initially, the People album may be empty after an upgrade, but after a few days most of the faces should come back. Also, with a new, different face detection algorithm the position of some faces may be slightly shifted and the set of recognised faces may be different. Some faces may be missing, some additional faces may be recognised. For the slightly shifted faces and additionally recognised faces, Photos may be waiting for you to confirm the names, after the new faces scan has finished. This can take several days. For my library with 50000 photos it took two weeks.

  • Open the album for each person in the People album and go to the bottom of the album. Click "Confirm additional faces".
  • If Photos alerts you, that more names have been added than you confirmed, check the album for the person carefully, if photos has made a mistake and confused the faces of two people.
  • If Photos is showing you wrong faces during the "Confirm" dialog, check the albums for the mismatches as well.

Photos 6 may not be able to use all previously assigned names. We are no longer allowed to assign the same name to two different faces in the same photo. So named faces may be missing, if you have a photo with two faces and Photos has used the name of a person for the wrong face. Sometimes some faces will be missing after an upgrade, that I have added manually.


When I migrated my libraries from iPhoto to Aperture I started to assign keywords with the name of the person in addition to naming the faces. Also I made screenshots of the people album to remember the original names I assigned. I continued this practice, when migrating to photos. Whenever I assign a name to a face, I am adding the name as the keyword. This is saving the assigned names across system upgrades and it helps a lot in Photos. It is not possible to see the full name of a person in the Info, unless we write the name to other metadata fields. The keywords help to check the faces after the upgrade with a smart album and to correct mistakes quickly:

For example - this smart album will help me to find all photos of a person, where Photos did not yet restore the person to its People album:


Checking with the opposite rules:

Keyword is not "Puppe: Tux" and Person is "Puppe: Tux" will tell you, if faces have become labelled as Tux, that are not Tux and need checking.


Here is more on using keywords to save the faces during an upgrade: How to use Keywords to Back Up the Named … - Apple Community


Using iCloud Photos can help a bit, to save the "People" album when upgrading, as the recent versions of Photos are syncing named faces with iCloud. But it can complicate things, if we have added faces manually on several devices and the circles of the manually added faces are in slightly different positions.

May 17, 2021 3:29 PM in response to léonie

I did manage to migrate all my libraries from iPhoto 9.6.1 to Photos 6.0, just by having Photos 6.0 do it. Some of the difficulty I had was from an apparent bug in Photos. Sometimes, on some photos, it will say it thinks a face is in one position in the photo, and if I look at other photos and come back, it will say it thinks that face is in a different position in that same photo. I’m able to fairly reliably reproduce the error. Fortunately it happens on only a few photos, so the library is still usable.

Missing and inconsistent face positions

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