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J
justinp23209741
Participating Frequently
May 25, 2024
Question

Including face recognition data when importing Apple Photos library

  • May 25, 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 1716 views

I'm planning to import my Apple Photos library (~20k photos) to LrC on an iMac.

 

I understand that there are ways to transfer the face recognition data from Apple Photos when doing the import (e.g. using Avalanche), but my question is whether this is a good idea.

 

It seems like an obviously good thing to do, given how much effort I have expended in making my Apple faces data complete and accurate. Also, I have around 500 unique, named faces in Apple Photos, so at a minimum it would save me from having to name them all again in LrC.

 

On the other hand, I'm not sure how LrC will use the imported Apple faces. Will LrC effectively treat them as manual face detections and hence as "truth"?  Or might LrC try to modify the imported faces based on results from LrC's own face detection/recognition algorithm? I assume that LrC will at least use the imported faces to train its algorithm when looking for new faces in existing and new photos.

 

Other info that may be relevant: I have made sure that all faces in my Apple library are mirrored as keywords embedded in my photo files, so even if I don't import the actual faces data I will still be able to search the files by a person's name. Also, there are very few manual face detections in my Apple Photos library, so I'm guessing that the LrC automated face detection algorithm will probably detect most of the same faces that the Apple algorithm has.

 

 

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

johnrellis
johnrellis
Brainiac
May 25, 2024

Though in years past questions have arisen about how to import face data from other apps (typically Google Picasa), I don't think your particular questions have been asked.  Have you verified that Avalanche will indeed migrate face data?  It has a free trial. In general, Avalanche has a very good reputation for migrating photos to LR, based on many reports in the forums.

 

If Avalanche does migrate the face data, my guess is that it will be treated the same as if you manually applied names to face rectangles.  But that's just a guess based on my long experience with LR metadata, and I don't have high confidence in its correctness.

J
justinp23209741Author
Participating Frequently
May 26, 2024

It's encouraging to hear that Avalanche has a good reputation. I will probably give the free trial a go, but my gut feeling is that a fresh start is the best option, as painful as that will be. 

 

That is, export photos to folder from Apple Photos, with basic metadata (incl. keywords) embedded in files. Then import photos into LrC and let it do its own face recognition from scratch. I figure this gives the LrC face algorithms the best chance of doing a good job.

 

The alternatives (Avalanche, Osxphotos) would probably save a lot of pain in the short term, but it will be difficult to confirm that they have accurately exported the face data, so there could be a much longer tail of pain going down this path.

 

If go down the fresh start path first and it turns out that the LrC face algorithms are greatly inferior to the Apple Photos ones (which I doubt), I can then resort to Avalanche/Osxphotos.

 

JohanElzenga
JohanElzenga
Community Expert
May 25, 2024

Lightroom Classic will not import an Apple Photos library at all. The import function it still has is for Apple iPhoto, the predecessor of Apple Photos. So you would have to use Avalanche to have any chance of success.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
J
justinp23209741Author
Participating Frequently
May 25, 2024

The other way would be to export all the photos to a folder and then import them into LrC. Osxphotos can be used to write the metadata, including face data, to sidecar files. It can also embed the face data in the exported photos via Exiftool. I haven't tried Osxphotos but there is at least one significant bug in its handling of faces, so I'm wary of going down this path.

R
RhetTbull
New Participant
June 3, 2024

I'm the author of osxphotos. This issue only affects the mouth and eye coordinates which are not part of the standard metadata that is exported. When exporting faces to XMP metadata, only the coordinates of the rectangle containing the face and the name of the person associated with the face are exported and osxphotos handles these correctly.

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