Skip to main content
M
mikko-eerola
Participant
August 4, 2024
Answered

How to reverse the decision to Start Finding Faces in Entire Catalog?

  • August 4, 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 2182 views

Without thinking my decision through, I clicked on "Start Finding Faces in Entire Catalog". I have over 50k images in the catalog with hundreds or thousands of images with large crowds. I do not all of them indexed.

 

I've been trying to reverse that decision by going back to an older backup of the Catalog which did not resolve the issue, and by resetting the preferences. I reached out to Adobe support chat and they told me that resetting the preferences would indeed reverse the decision but that turned out to be false.

 

My question is: does anyone know where this choice/action to scan the entire catalog is stored? And how can I get back to the previous state?

 

I can of course delete the entire application and all the related files, and restore a backup of the catalog from before making the fateful choice. That should clean the slate, right?

 

To be clear: I don't want to pause the indexing by clicking on the top left-hand corner of the application nor do I want to get out of the People view. I want to completely reverse the choice to index the entire catalog.

 

 

macOS Sonoma 14.6 and Lightroom Classic 13.4

Correct answer johnrellis

@mikko-eerola: "I just would like the action to go away, to get me back to the state before clicking on "Find faces in entire catalog"."

 

Pausing Face Detection and deleting all recognized face rectangles gets you exactly back to the state your catalog was in before you enabled Face Detection. Reverting to a backup copy of the catalog will accomplish nothing extra and is a waste of time.

 

As mentioned above, the Face Detection menu item in the identity-plate menu and the option Catalog Settings > Metadata > Automatically Detect Faces In All Photos do exactly the same thing. You can try it for yourself.

2 replies

K
KATHYSNAPPED
Participant
August 25, 2024

did you ever figure this out? how to get it back to the original screen? i am on the same boat. 

johnrellis
johnrellis
Legend
August 4, 2024

"I don't want to pause the indexing by clicking on the top left-hand corner of the application nor do I want to get out of the People view. I want to completely reverse the choice to index the entire catalog."

 

Pausing Face Detection stops LR from automatically recognizing face rectangles ("indexing") in any photos it hasn't already indexed.

 

But it won't remove the face rectangles that have already been recognized. Is there a reason you want to remove them? They take up very little space in the catalog.

 

If you really want to remove them in batch: 

 

1. In Library, click All Photographs, then do Photo > Stacking > Expand All Stacks.

 

2. Do View > People.

 

3. Click a face thumbnail in the Unnamed section and do Edit > Select All.

 

4. Do Photo > People > Remove Face Region.

 

5. Go to Library.

 

But note that while you're doing this in People view, LR will continue indexing face rectangles from photos that haven't ever been indexed, even if Face Detection is paused. There's no way to stop that, so when you follow the steps above, there will be a few photos newly indexed while you do the steps. 

 

You could let Face Detection run overnight, then follow the steps.  As long as you don't go into People view, no new face rectangles will be added. 

 

But I don't see any practical advantage in deleting the existing face rectangles.

M
mikko-eerolaAuthor
Participant
August 5, 2024
quote

But it won't remove the face rectangles that have already been recognized. Is there a reason you want to remove them? They take up very little space in the catalog.

 

Thanks for the answer. I'm not worried about the already recognised rectangles. I just would like the action to go away, to get me back to the state before clicking on "Find faces in entire catalog".

 

Maybe I'll delete and reinstall Lightroom and go back to a backup of the catalog to see if it gets me to my desired state.

johnrellis
johnrellisCorrect answer
Legend
August 5, 2024

@mikko-eerola: "I just would like the action to go away, to get me back to the state before clicking on "Find faces in entire catalog"."

 

Pausing Face Detection and deleting all recognized face rectangles gets you exactly back to the state your catalog was in before you enabled Face Detection. Reverting to a backup copy of the catalog will accomplish nothing extra and is a waste of time.

 

As mentioned above, the Face Detection menu item in the identity-plate menu and the option Catalog Settings > Metadata > Automatically Detect Faces In All Photos do exactly the same thing. You can try it for yourself.

Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices