Face Recognition - Elements 2019

[Sherry D Villines]

Why am I assigning names to the same pictures over and over again?  Why are "faces" that I have labeled "Do Not Show Again" (e.g., George Washington at Mount Rushmore) showing up time and time again? I have a 127,673 files in my catalog.  The files are located in two places:  (1) Main hard drive - 1T; (2) External hard drive - 2T.   I know there are pictures that are either duplicates, copies or very similar but not this many. I have a photo that I can find only one instance for the actual photo and another for the preview which was presumably created when I assigned the person's name.  I have been prompted to Add a Name for that face in that one photo at least four or five times.  I thought I was finished with all the assignments after making 1400+ stack assignments  and waiting for the message in the lower right of the screen about analyzing the faces finally went away.  Now, I am presented with 612 more unnamed people and I am recognizing that I am doing the same photos multiple times.  What is going on?  This can't be normal.

[Greg_S.]

Unfortunately, what you are seeing is, in my experience, somewhat "normal."  Do you shoot in raw+jpg?  If so, each photo is treated separately and I often see the same photo in jpg and raw formats treated separately.  I'm sure the same is true of version set photos.

Are you sure that you are using a Don't Show Again command on the images and not a Not this Person command?

I have a photo that I can find only one instance for the actual photo and another for the preview which was presumably created when I assigned the person's name.

Where are you finding the "preview"? 

I thought I was finished with all the assignments after making 1400+ stack assignments  and waiting for the message in the lower right of the screen about analyzing the faces finally went away.  Now, I am presented with 612 more unnamed people and I am recognizing that I am doing the same photos multiple times.

The FR status in the lower right is also something that, in my experience, is not accurate.  As I understand it, each time you name a person, or add a name to a photo, it gets added to the "recognized" faces and is used in the analysis to compare with the as yet unrecognized/unnamed photos.

Are the photos on your internal and external photo storage disks the same or is one a backup of the other?

Also, have you unchecked the Hide Small Stacks box?  If you haven't, that may explain why new unnamed photos are appearing in stacks since additional analysis may add more than 3 photos to a stack and all of a sudden it appears in the grid.  (This is a pure guess on my part.)

[Sherry D Villines]

Hi Greg,

Thanks for your response.  To answer your questions:

1.  I tried to be careful to select the "Do Not Show Again" and "remember my choice" check boxes for faces I did not want analyzed.  However, I'm not sure the confirmation message that the face was added to the Do Not Show People category always appeared.  I can't remember. 

2.  I shoot in both .jpg and raw but not in Jpg+raw.  It would make sense that Elements would treat each one individually when adding names.  But that is not the case here.

3.  I looked at an old backup of the operating system and found that the "previews" folder did exist before I started using Elements 19.  So I was wrong about assuming the "preview" image was created in the Add a Name process.

4.  The 1400 stacks I mentioned included both large stacks and small stacks.  I unchecked the Hide Small Stacks box and assigned names to all the stacks.  Then the next time I looked at it, there were the 612 new stacks of unnamed people to be assigned.  I didn't check them all but I had added names for almost every face that reappeared in the Unnamed People stacks. 

5.  My photos are in two locations and one is not a copy of the other.  As space fills up on the internal hard drive, I move folders from there to the external hard drive -- all within Elements.  All are in my PSE catalog.

Yes, like you, I thought that when you added a name to a face that the face (and its photo) was designated in the Named People group and  Elements used named faces to further refine its analysis when new photos are added.  You would think it would get better the more faces you named.  Same would be true of the faces you designated not to show.  But I am seeing both reappear.

Is it possible that this system is so slow that, even when you wait for confirmations before moving on, you can move on after the confirmation but your assignments don't happen?  If that's the case, it's a serious drawback to using Elements for this purpose.  It's one of the main reasons to use Elements in the first place.  I read once that Elements is better at organizing photos than Lightroom or Photoshop.

Any insights as to how this works and what is happening are much appreciated.

[Greg_S.]

Sherry, you seem to be doing everything as designed.  I was particularly interested by your following comment.

4.  The 1400 stacks I mentioned included both large stacks and small stacks.  I unchecked the Hide Small Stacks box and assigned names to all the stacks.  Then the next time I looked at it, there were the 612 new stacks of unnamed people to be assigned.  I didn't check them all but I had added names for almost every face that reappeared in the Unnamed People stacks.

I thought that I was imagining things when I perceived this to be happening with my catalog.  In other words, I thought that I was seeing the same images appearing over and over again in the stacks.  I have a large catalog and often shoot in bursts, so I thought maybe the "faces" were not identical.  I have noticed this phenomenon more with images that I have marked as Don't Show Again.  I have not verified this issue by looking at the images themselves, but I will try to do as you have done to confirm the problem.

The only other comment I have is about the slowness of the program.  One contributing factor may be Auto-Creations.  Do you have this feature turned on?  In theory, it only works in the background when nothing else is happening on your computer.  But it may be a factor, particularly with large catalogs.  What is the total number of files in your catalog?

[Sherry D Villines]

Hi Greg,

Yes, you are right that if you shoot in bursts or shoot the same scene repeatedly, you will be asked to name the "identical" faces in those repeated images multiple times.  I also had the problem with Don't Show Again faces.  The only reason I think something else is at work here is because of the example in my first post -- the one image with a uniquely identifiable face that repeatedly comes up as unnamed.  My catalog contains 127,673 files which I didn't think was unusually large.

I am coming to the conclusion that this program is so slow that when you think you have completed an action (e.g., you get a completed message that something has been saved) and move on, it really isn't saved.  So when you move on, in effect the processing is interrupted and your action doesn't "stick".  I will turn off the Auto-Creations feature and see if that helps.