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Photo's app not scanning faces

Hi all,

I have recently imported my old photo library into my iMac running Big Sur and when I select faces, it simply comes up

"0 Photo's Scanned

Photos will continue scanning your remaining 53408 photos when you're not using the app and your Mac is connected to Power"

I have left this running for multiple days now without interruption and it is not scanning any at all.

There are many pictures in here with clear faces so I do not know how to have it force the scan.


A lot of web searches I have found have not provided any clear answers.


Cheers

iMac 27″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Jun 29, 2021 8:44 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jun 29, 2021 9:38 PM

The status bar is not continually updated. Just let it run. My Photos Library has also more than 50000 photos and videos and the scan for faces finished after three weeks.

Photos may have recognised many faces by now, but it will add only a person to the People album after it has recognised the same person in many photos, and only a small selection of the few most frequently recognised people. This will only happen, after most photos have been scanned.


You can check, if already some faces have been recognised, by enabling the option "View > Show Face Names" in the View menu in Photos. This way you will be seeing circles around detected faces and can already enter a name in the text field below the circle, to add the face to the People album.


One thing you could also do while waiting for the faces scan to finish - you may want to check, if your Photos Library is containing legacy media. Older versions of Photos allowed us to import photos and videos in formats, that can no longer be processed on macOS 11 Big Sur. A video or photo in format that Photos can no longer read can prevent Photos from analysing the library. Such items should have been removed and converted to a more compatible format while you still have been using a system version that has been supporting these formats. On Big Sur the safest format for videos is H.264 or HEVC, and for photos I am sticking with the RAW format of my main camera, TIFF, PNG, JPEG, and HEIC. This list for iMovie could give you an idea, which media formats you can still use with macOS 11 Big Sur: About incompatible media in iMovie for macOS - Apple Support

An easy way to search for legacy Media are smart albums, where we can search for the filename extension, also look at the status bar below the "All Photos" view. Are any items shown as "unable to upload to iCloud Photos Library"? About the status bar in Photos for macOS - Apple Support


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6 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 29, 2021 9:38 PM in response to BMG.AUS

The status bar is not continually updated. Just let it run. My Photos Library has also more than 50000 photos and videos and the scan for faces finished after three weeks.

Photos may have recognised many faces by now, but it will add only a person to the People album after it has recognised the same person in many photos, and only a small selection of the few most frequently recognised people. This will only happen, after most photos have been scanned.


You can check, if already some faces have been recognised, by enabling the option "View > Show Face Names" in the View menu in Photos. This way you will be seeing circles around detected faces and can already enter a name in the text field below the circle, to add the face to the People album.


One thing you could also do while waiting for the faces scan to finish - you may want to check, if your Photos Library is containing legacy media. Older versions of Photos allowed us to import photos and videos in formats, that can no longer be processed on macOS 11 Big Sur. A video or photo in format that Photos can no longer read can prevent Photos from analysing the library. Such items should have been removed and converted to a more compatible format while you still have been using a system version that has been supporting these formats. On Big Sur the safest format for videos is H.264 or HEVC, and for photos I am sticking with the RAW format of my main camera, TIFF, PNG, JPEG, and HEIC. This list for iMovie could give you an idea, which media formats you can still use with macOS 11 Big Sur: About incompatible media in iMovie for macOS - Apple Support

An easy way to search for legacy Media are smart albums, where we can search for the filename extension, also look at the status bar below the "All Photos" view. Are any items shown as "unable to upload to iCloud Photos Library"? About the status bar in Photos for macOS - Apple Support


Jun 30, 2021 12:02 AM in response to léonie

It isn't even a progress bar, it displays this simply when I select on People.

I don't see a single face when I select people at all - just that message.


It is moving from an old version of the App (I think the old Mac was OSX Catalina maybe even Yosemite) and it cannot be upgraded. However, it should still pick up the faces from the photo's you would think or re-scan them.


Would be good if I could force it to rescan all the photo's!

Jun 30, 2021 5:33 AM in response to BMG.AUS

Let Photos run. You may want to restart the Mac occasionally and start Photos again to ensure, that the background processes are still running.

There is no way to force a new faces scan. Photos is doing the scan only once, after a photo or video has been imported, and again, if you install a new system version, that has changed the algorithm for the face detection. A photo will also be scanned again, if you add adjustments to a photo or retouched it, because the editing could have removed faces.


Photo's app not scanning faces

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