How to reset ignored faces in photoshop elements Organizer (2022)

This is in Photoshop Elements Organizer 2022.

First of all, feature request: being able to undo or reset an ignored face should be part of the program.  If you accidentally ignore a face, it should be able to be undone.  This is UX best practice to allow undo. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/user-control-and-freedom/  .  In Organizer, accidentally ignoring a face cannot be undone. The "solution" of resetting all faces in your catalog and starting from the beginning is not a solution.  That "solution" is like telling someone that if they accidentally bold something in a word processor then they need to erase and rewrite their entire document.

There is a way to reset all the ignored faces (but not destroying all the other faces), if you're willing to go spelunking in the organizer SQLite database and change some data. It's not perfect, but could save you hours, days or weeks over resetting your whole organizer catalog in order to get some ignored faces you need back.

So here is how to reset the ignored faces data in the database so that you can re-identify some faces you accidentally ignored without destroying all other faces and everything in the catalog.

1. Open the Organizer and identify a face you don't really care about by giving it a name like "test person." Close the Organizer.  We're going to move the ignored faces into this person's face tag to work with them later.
2. Download and install a SQLite database editor like DB Browser for SQLite.
3. Find the database for the catalog on your computer which will be someplace like C:\ProgramData\Adobe\Elements Organizer\Catalogs\<catalog name>\catalog.pse20db . IDK where it is exactly on Mac.
4. Make a copy of the file before you edit it in case you mess it up. You can just copy the old copy back to the old name if you do mess it up.
5. You should have Organizer closed.  Open the file in the SQLite database editor you installed.
6.  Open the catalog.pse20db in the SQLite editor program.  You might have to select the "all files" option from the open dialog since the normal sqlite file extension is different than the one Adobe uses, but it is a SQLite database at least for the past few versions of Organizer.  I believe they used MS Access or some other database in earlier versions of Organizer before around 2020.
7. Find the id number for the person you created in step 1 and write the id down. In DB Browser for SQLite do this by clicking the Browse Data tab, Select the tag_table from the table drop-down and type the name in the filter box above the name column.
8. Go to the Execute SQL tab and put this query into the box, but replace the number from step 7 where it shows <replace-id-here>.

UPDATE metadata_string_table
SET value = ('<replace-id-here>#' || substr(value, 3))
WHERE value LIKE '0#%';​

Select the code you put in and press the button that looks like a play button (right pointing triangle).  This executes the SQL and updates the face metadata assigned to user number 0 which appears to be what ignored faces are assigned to.

• Next put this into the Execute SQL tab instead.  Change the 2 places where it shows <tag_id> to the id number from step 7.

INSERT OR IGNORE INTO tag_to_media_table (media_id, tag_id, media_index, tag_confidence)
SELECT m1.media_id, <tag-id> as tag_id, 0 as media_index, 0 as tag_confidence
FROM media_to_metadata_table m1
JOIN metadata_string_table m2
ON m1.metadata_id = m2.id
WHERE m2.value like '<tag-id>#%';

Select the code you put in and press the button that looks like a play button (right pointing triangle).  This executes the SQL and updates the face metadata info string so it's associated with the correct media and the tag for your new person from step 1.

10. Click the File > Write Changes menu to write the changes to the catalog file and close the DB Browser for SQLite.

Now open up Organizer, go to the People tab and find the person you created in step number 1.  You should see all the ignored faces under this person now.  You can pull out the people you didn't want to ignore into another face by selecting some of the faces, right-clicking and choosing rename. If you just want to put them in the general UnNamed people stacks then right-click and choose not <name> instead.  For the people (or pictures of hubcap "faces") that you really want to ignore again, you can right click and choose don't show again.