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Question

Problems with 2020 Facial Recognition

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
January 4, 2020
12 replies
3972 views

I too have the issue of Elements 2020 not running facial recognition since it converted my Elements 2015 catalog. It does NOT show "Analysing Faces" in the lower right corner and is not using CPU or Disk while sitting idle in the People tab. Facial tags were not done in Elements 15, so I expected the program to be busy tagging all my videos. Natta!!! I deleted some photos from the catalog, while leaving the files in place in My Pictures folder on disk. It did not retag the photos. So even photo tagging is not being done anymore.

As I said, my prior version Elements 15 didn't do video tagging. Also, I didn't have Premiere Elements 15 installed. So with both Photoshop & Premiere Elements 2020 installed, I decided to delete all videos from the catalog, again while leaving in place on the disk, then reimporting. Still no facial tagging. Nadda!!! It just says "Adobe Catalog" in lower right corner. No CPU and no disk access.

The Preferences are set for both Video and Photo for both People View and Smart Tagging. I have tried turning them off, rebooting, turning them back on, rebooting. I don't want to click the reset recognition data button because I have about 42,000 photos tagged.

I noticed that I have 2 json folders. One in the catalogs folder and another under facial recognition. Many of the json files, dating all the way back to 2016, have 2 bytes. The contents are curly brackets like these:{} Also, it would appear that the Organizer touches them because my Sync.com backup software uploads updated Date Accessed (the files I looked at stayed 2 bytes).

Any suggestions on what log to look in to see why it is not doing analysis would be appreciated.
Thanks

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Greg_S.

Community Expert

Bill, you clearly have a handle on what is going on. I have tried to reproduce what you are seeing/not seeing, but haven't been able to do so thus far. All I can say is the following:

Normally, all photos are analyzed for face recognition before any video is analyzed.

Videos take a long time to analyze.

If photos are added to the catalog while video analysis is taking place, the photo analysis will take precedence.

Given your workflow thus far, I'm wondering whether one of the preferences toggles has become corrupted. I would suggest that you try resetting the preferences file. Immediately after launching the program, press Alt+Shift+Ctrl. A message should pop up asking if you want to delete the Settings file. Answer OK. Then go back into preferences and turn off the photo analysis if that is what you want to do. (I think they are all on by default.) I have no idea whether this will work but it is worth a try and won't do any damage to your catalog.

Have you been working totally on your new catalog? Are you getting the same results with your converted catalog. The converted catalog should carry over any face recognition that was performed with Elements 15. (Obviously, there is no FR for videos in the earlier version.) BTW, did you move the whole catalog folder from the default location to your F: drive, or just the catalog.pse18db file?

You asked:

I imported all 43,000+ photos and the hundred or so tags of people's names (where did Elements get these tags since this was an all new import of My Pictures folder into a new catalog?).

The tags are stored in the file metadata. I think you have seen that when you imported the tagged files into a new catalog that you were given the option to import the tags too. These end up in the Imported Keyword Tag category. Since the face recognition information found in the .json files does not get imported, the tags are not associated with a face and therefore do not get placed in the system People tags.

Let us know if resetting the preferences file does anything for you. If not, I will try to escalate the problem.

B

billj2029259Author

Known Participant

Hi Greg. I tried the reset twice. No help. It started doing face recognition and then stopped a few seconds after I turned off Photos in Preferences. Interestingly, after resetting, while the Preference for Photo recognition for People is turned back on it is left off for Smart tags. My Saved File and Cache locations remain unchanged. The rest of my settings went back to default.

At this point, I am not concerned about my old catalog because it might have gotten corrupted and all I have to do is use my backups to go back in time before the corruption. My last face tag was created on 12/4 so I can probably reload everything to either 12/4 or the backup before that. All I lose is my work since 12/4. I can let 2020 convert the last working catalog. So if I can find out why video is not working I can resume from there.

Yes, I moved the Adobe Catalog folder to F:. It contains all the files and subfolders under that.

I haven't been working on any catalog because I must have video recognition. I was thinking of creating a test bed with just a dozen video files of each type (mp4, avi, etc.). No photos. Then importing that into yet another new catalog. It would be really great for doing that if I had access to Elements' logs. That way I could look for thrown errors or calls to procedures that never return.

Thanks for the info on the tags being stored in the file. That explains why my program that looks for duplicates using SHA-512 hashing doesn't see the exact same photo as a duplicate. The photo files are a different size and must be from Elements adding the metadata to the file.

Greg_S.

Community Expert

billj2029259, I have moved your post to a new thread so that it gets appropriate attention.

billj2029259 said:

I deleted some photos from the catalog, while leaving the files in place in My Pictures folder on disk. It did not retag the photos. So even photo tagging is not being done anymore.

What do you mean by "it did not retag the photos"? Are you saying that you deleted the photos from your 2020 catalog and then imported the files again, but the existing tags were not imported with the files? Or are you talking about Smart Tags?

As for there being no face tagging taking place, are there any stacks visible in the People>UnNamed panel? Have you unchecked the Hide Small Stacks box in the upper left of the panel?

When you installed 2020, did your Elements 15 catalog convert over to 2020, and is that the catalog you are now using?

Do you have any smart tags in the catalog? Can you determine whether smart tagging has been completed?

Do you have Auto Creations turned on? Have any Auto Creations been generated?

Is the Elements Auto Creations 2020 process running in Task Manager? (If you don't see any CPU activity, wait at least a minute with the computer idle and see if it starts up.)

If you double click on an untagged photo with a face that you expect to have facial recognition, so that it is in Full Screen View, what happens if you click on the Mark Face button? Do you get any message that analysis has not been completed? Also, if you hover over the face, do you get a circle with a text box to add a name?

CharlesSBanks

Known Participant

And Greg is off immediately with his questions, just like always. billj2029259 I even tried to talk with technical support on this before I RETURNED 2020 and went back to 2019. Just like Greg, they think we are all stupid and it's our fault. After upgrading to 2020 I had about 15 photos with no person tag. In 2020 I could never get them identified. Fortunately, I did not un-install 2019 so I went back into it and immediately all 15 people were reconized. Facial reconizition is not working in 2020 but no one will admit it. Like other versions, eventially they will get around to fixing it, you just have to waste time while you wait.

Greg, NONE of your questions are relevant! billj2029259 see if you can find a copy of 2019 to upgrade to.

Greg_S.

Community Expert

Charles, I'm not going to stop you ranting over your frustration with the program. But I will correct your misinformation based on your very limited experience with it.

Facial recognition has improved with each new version since it was first featured (and I have extensively tested and used each version). Elements 2020 FR is the best yet, both in terms of performance and accuracy. I recently created a new catalog of over 170,000 files. It took several days to complete the face recognition, averaging about 2,000 images per hour. I ended up with stacks of my close family members that exceeded 1,000 faces per stack, most with 100% recognition accuracy. More than 18,000 total face stacks were created. So, to say that "Facial recognition is not working in [Elements] 2020" is plainly not true. All you can truthfully say is that it didn't work for you. Why it works for me and not for you will never be known, particularly since you refuse to answer my questions. That's no skin off my nose.

And just to be clear, I don't think any user coming here for help is stupid. But your post makes a very persuasive case for changing my mind.

[END OF DISCUSSION] Feel free to rant on but don't expect a further response from me.

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