How to reindex facial recognition data in LR 6?

[dimkasmir]

I accidentally deleted all of the faces that Lightroom recognized in my photos upon the initial indexing. Is there anyway to reset the facial recognition index so that I can go through the process again?

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

The Official Feature Request/Bug Report Forum at http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family

[TheDigitalDog]

Victoria_Bampton wrote:

The Official Feature Request/Bug Report Forum at http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family

Oh, got you. Thanks. I think I know how far that will get me

But thanks for officially answering the question many have had here about the ability or lack thereof to re-indext images that don't have FR. I could do this all over again but I got 95% of the work done and I'll just leave the other's not tagged as is. Hopefully in the future there will be a way to revisit them in mass.

[garethjjones]

I'm playing with this too - and it seems quite buggy - in that I can confirm a name, the thumbnail agoes up to named people, and a little bit later that thumbnail disappears - and I can continue to accept a suggestion (i.e. click the tick) - and the thumbnail in named people disappears, but it doesn't appear in named people!

Also, if you tag people as Unknown, they become a 'named people'. If later, you want to re-classify them, you can delete their name tag, and they revery to being an 'Unamed people' - so you can go back and reclassify. If you're doing this on a collection by collection basis, or on other keywords, then you do get a manageable amount of faces to tag with correct names. I've got 76k worth of gymnastics images in one catalog - I'm not going to do FR on them all!

[garethjjones]

Definatly need re-indexing. I just tried to index a subdirectory, and it wasn't online (I presume lightroom tried to index the previews?). No people found. Plugged the external in, and indexed another directory from the same competition - found people. Switch back to the first directory and still no people found, and no way to make lightroom look again (that I found so far)

[mattl5631332]

Apart from the interesting software FR algorithm issues, the major fail, Adobe, is not warning users of the impact of a destructive function in deleting "unnamed" people.

Selecting a number of unknown/unnamed faces in people view, hit "delete/reject" and there is no warning of a permanent, mass change to meta-data associated with the images or even a confirm dialog. How did this make it past user experience? Very out of character in LR?

Victoria, not sure why Adobe would not want to allow a user to re-index content with variable granularity?

[TheDigitalDog]

mattl5631332 wrote:

Victoria, not sure why Adobe would not want to allow a user to re-index content with variable granularity?

I could be wrong, but I suspect it's less about what they don't want and more with what they can't do. At least today.

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

Matt Langford wrote:

Victoria, not sure why Adobe would not want to allow a user to re-index content with variable granularity?

That's a question I can't answer, sorry.

[Bob Somrak]

Victoria

I am going to withhold further judgement on the FR tool until I get a little more practice with it and learn the ins and out of how it works as I am liking it better.  I will have to get your Lightroom 6 FAQ book when it comes out (when is it expected) as I am sure you will have all kinds of hints to get the most out of it.  Thanks again for all you GREAT help in the past

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

Robert Somrak wrote:

your Lightroom 6 FAQ book when it comes out (when is it expected)

Couple of weeks Bob!

[Wolf Eilers]

Victoria_Bampton wrote:

The Official Feature Request/Bug Report Forum at http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family

Has there been an official feature request posted to allow re-indexing. I can't find one.

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

Wolf Eilers wrote:

The Official Feature Request/Bug Report Forum at http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family

Has there been an official feature request posted to allow re-indexing. I can't find one.

I don't remember seeing one.

[Wolf Eilers]

I have added this request: Lightroom 6/CC - Allow facial recognition feature to re-index a folder/collection. Please up-vote or add additional comments or suggestions.

[Bob Somrak]

Victoria_Bampton wrote:

I'm not going to argue with you Andrew, but I will make a suggestion... rephrase your FR as a way to "ignore faces" and post it on the FR site.  The reindexing request in your scenario will almost certainly be declined (except possibly in the case of photos that haven't already been touched), but moving faces to an ignored section has a better shot at being approved with enough support, IMHO.

At the very least you should be able to select a group of photos and "un-index" and/of "un-FR" them so Lightroom would think they were never indexed.  Otherwise FR will just have to go into the bin of tools in Lr which were ALMOST GOOD such as BOOK etc.

[rconejo]

I think there is a way to reindex the faces. Just remove those pictures from your library and add them again to force reindexing. Unfortunatelly I guess that allprevious  adjustments will be lost.

I also claim for a "reindex faces" option.

[bob frost]

If you flip your images horizontally, you can get LR to start indexing again, and it does find some missing images. When it has finished just flip them all back again. The faces flip back as well.

But to re-index a folder from scratch again, perhaps because like me you have accidentally deleted some faces, is more complicated. It can be done as I've just done it on a folder of 6000 images, part of a 100K catalog.

Step 1 is to backup the catalog, twice if you are of a nervous disposition!

Step 2 is to select the images in the folder you want to re-index from scratch, and export them to a new catalog (without originals or previews - you just want the data in the catalog)

Step 3 is to download a browser that allows you to look at and edit tables in the catalog. I use DB browser for SQLite < https://github.com/sqlitebrowser/sqlitebrowser/releases>

Step 4 is to open the new catalog containing the images to be re-indexed with the browser (NOT with LR ).

Step 5 is to find the tables in the browser that pertain to face recognition. I found four containing face info

Adobe_libraryImageFaceProcessHistory

AgLibraryFace

AgLibraryFaceCluster

AgLibraryFaceData

Step 6 is to delete all the lines of info in these tables. Just select all the lines in a table in the usual way and then click on delete at top right. Repeat with the other face tables

Step 7 is to save the edited catalog without the face info, and exit the browser.

Step 8 is to open LR with your main catalog, and remove the contents of the folder you are about to reimage. Remove the files from the catalog, NOT from the disk. This process can take some time. I watched it using the Performance monitor in win10, because although deleting the images from the catalog is more or less instant, deleting the previews is a more lengthy affair which seems to occur when LR feels like it.

Step 9 is to import the images from the edited catalog without face info back into your main catalog, where they will replace the ones you have just removed that had face info.

Step 10 is to tell LR to make new previews for these imported images (all your editing data is still there - you have not lost it), and then to start face recognition on this folder.

I have just done this and all my faces of named and unnamed people are now back; the main catalog passes the LR integrity test and I'm now back where I was yesterday before I accidentally removed all those faces.

It would of course be easier if Adobe coded this for us!

Bob Frost

• Comment        

[TheDigitalDog]

bob frost wrote

It would of course be easier if Adobe coded this for us!

They should have when the functionality was first introduced a year ago. They still haven't. Between this, all the bugs that get out before release and so on, the LR team needs more caffeine or something . This isn't how LR was developed originally; someone's not paying attention to our beloved (at least originally) LR product!

[AlexeyE30]

Hi friends!

Sorry for any mistakes in English, I used Google Translate.

For a start, I recommend to make a copy of your catalog.

I solved this problem as follows:

1) File "lrcat" is a database, similar in structure to mdb databases (MS Access), but they are not compatible. In order to view its contents, we will need a small free program - "DB Browser for SQLite" - you can download it on the site http://sqlitebrowser.org/

I used version 3.5.1, the latest version 3.6.0 gives me an error at startup.

2) I ran "DB Browser" and after examining its internal structure, decided that the table "Adobe_LibraryImageFaceProcessHistory" contains information about the process of face recognition.

To select it, you need to find it in the drop-down list in the "Browse Data". I think that the field "lastTryStatus" just says LR, whether it is necessary to look for the person or not.

Unfortunately, the program "DB Browser" can not change the data in many cells at once, so I had to delete all the contents of the table. (It's pretty simple - highlight the line as well as in Excel - while holding down the Shift key and press the button after selecting in the upper-right-hand side - "Delete Record"). In the case of a very large table, I singled out by 5000 lines, otherwise the program was conceived a long time.

3) Exit the program and agree to save the changes (we made a backup, did not you?)

4) Run the LR, and it re-starts the process of face recognition! 

(If you do not delete the entire table, it will scan only what you deleted)

Obviously, this database contains all the information for all the images, but I have not found a simple way how to selectively delete the information about images, for example from one directory.

Analyzing tables inside the database, you can see what fields are responsible for that, find a table with directories, select their codes to find files that belong to these directories, find the codes for these files, find these codes in the table with the results of the scan persons ... but this program is not designed for such deep analysis.

If you can translate the Lrcat base in mdb format, and then back, it would have been possible. The program "DB Browser" allows you to export and import tables to CSV format. The same format understands and MS Access, but it is too complicated path for me).

I hope what helped you)

[Bob Somrak]

Good Info, thanks.  In that case than it shouldn't be to hard for Adobe to implement a reindex or unindex of a group of selected photos.  Getting them to do it is another matter.  Seems like a feature many people would like including me.  If Adobe won't do it then maybe one of the great plugin authors will implement it.

[bob frost]

Yes, I was looking at that table with DB browser yesterday, and thinking of deleting the contents to see what would happen. Thanks for beating me to it! I'm not sure how this table links to all the other tables on face recognition?

Bob Frost

[AlexeyE30]

Hi Bob!
Of course, these tables are connected. But fortunately, LR is quite clever system and it indexes all over again. At least I did not have problems with it.

[WilderW]

On the question of how well LR recognizes faces and matches for a given face, I did do a comparison with Picasa and Apple Photos. Picasa seems to do the best job (substantially better than LR) and seems to have the most efficient user interface for accepting and confirming matches. Picasa does not otherwise suit me for management and processing, so I am hopeful Adobe will raise their game in future releases.

[javaap]

The solution:

1. Backup your lrcat file

2. Open your lrcat file in sqlitestudio

3. Bring SQL console (Alt-E)

Run SQL query

delete from Adobe_LibraryImageFaceProcessHistory where id_local in (select face.id_local from AgLibraryFile file join AgLibraryFolder folder on file.folder = folder.id_local join Adobe_images image on file.id_local = image.rootFile join Adobe_LibraryImageFaceProcessHistory face on face.image = image.id_local where folder.pathFromRoot like "2009/japan%")

where you replace the last part (2009/japan) by the path you want reindex. Do not forget % sign at the end - it means all paths staring by 2009\japan
Probably you need replace backslash \ by slash / on Mac

[kenbrga]

This is the easiest way I know to reindex photos for facial recognition:

Select the photos you want to reindex

Select "Go to Folder in Library"

<Delete>

Select "Remove" (Obviously NOT "Delete from Disk")

Reimport from the library the photos are in

You can then apply face recognition again to the photos

Obviously not ideal, but better than doing them one-by-one

[AE-FTW]

I recently imported my 80,000 photo library. Things were progressing well until I discovered whole folders and many images missing (~5000) . I could not add these folders and images because they were already imported?! Doing a search for missing images I found many had been "unable to be found" and manually reconnecting each folder,fixed many issues, but now none of these 5000 photos have any facial recognition and there's no way to initiate it. They were clearly skipped (because they were missing, even though the paths were correct), so that's it. No 2nd chances! This is madness.

[philc30713433]

PROGRESS! 

"Find Faces Again" feature in v7.3

Use Intelligent facial recognition in Lightroom Classic CC