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

[mikko-eerola]

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

[johnrellis]

"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.

[GoldingD]

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

By @johnrellis

hmm, what about in the Catalog Settings:

Absolutely avoid Face Detection, so no lessons learned on my end.

[johnrellis]

That option "Automatically detect faces in all photos" is exactly the same as pausing Face Detection in the identity-plate window. But even when Face Detection is paused, when you go into People view, LR will start indexing all the photos in the currently selected folder or collection, and you can't stop that.

[mikko-eerola]

hmm, what about in the Catalog Settings:

That setting (automatically detect faces in all photos) has not been activated for me.

[mikko-eerola]

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 · Accepted solution]

@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.

[steven-hartz]

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.

Yes. It's a privacy concern. Frankly, I don't know why there wasn't an option to stop and do nothing when I accidentally pressed "O". I do not want to recognize faces en masse and I appear unable to stop it once it's started.

Face Detection is "paused" but "Detecting Faces in Filmstrip" has continued. This process should be cancellable (not just pausable) and deleting this data I have accidentally collected should be easy.

The more Adobe wires it's products into its cloud service, the more concerned I am about using them, and the more I want to "opt-in" to using them. I do no want this process to happen when I accidentally press "O", and then choose the option that looks most like "do nothing". (It did not do nothing, it appears to have started finding faces in my latest import.) I want the ability to stop this process when it starts. (It does not stop when it is "paused". I want to cancel this entirely and not leave it in a "paused" state.) I should be able to readily delete the results after it runs. The process provided above is complicated and not intuitive.

[KATHYSNAPPED]

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

[johnrellis]

@KATHYSNAPPED, see my previous two posts:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/how-to-reverse-the-decision-to-start-fi...

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/how-to-reverse-the-decision-to-start-fi...

[alexramsay1]

I tried entering"G" to get back to the library, and that seemed to work