How smart is Elements Organizer?

[RedSanders]

Windows 11, Elements Organizer 2024

I'm working with thousands of photos.  I'm in the process of cleaning up mistakes organizer has made when using facial recognition.  For example, Cullen and Caleb are brothers., and as expected, they resemble each other.  When I look at Cullen's "Confirmed Faces", some are of Caleb.  And, vice versa.

Is it necessary to correct ALL the incorrect IDs in BOTH groups of Confirmed Faces?  Or can I correct some and Organizer's facial recognition in each of the groups, and Organizer will use these corrections to finish the job in both groups?  In other words, will Organizer "learn" from the corrections and finish the work for me.  I love the program, but maybe I'm expecting too much.

[Greg_S. · Accepted solution]

Yes, the Organizer does learn from its mistakes (which are actually your mistakes for confirming the wrong name to a face).   So, if you look at Cullen's Named People stack, you can select all of the thumbnails of Caleb and then click the Not this person button.  The faces will then be put in a new UnNamed Person stack where you will be able to name the stack with the correct person's name.

As you continue to perform this process, the Organizer will learn from the facial recognition errors and future suggestions should offer an improvement in the recognized stacks.  However, you do seem to be expecting too much.  Elements will not 

finish the work for you.  But it will give you the tools to make the work easier.  Nor is it perfect.   I have found that the greatest problems occur when naming siblings at various stages in their life.  Even I cannot tell which of my two grandsons faces is in their younger photos.  I often have to look at the date of the photo to figure that out.

And in order to prevent such mistakes from happening in the first place, I recommend that you open up each stack of faces that you are about to name in order to confirm that all of the faces in the stack belong to one person.  It is easy to remove a person whose face does not belong in the stack at that stage.   And if the face is too small to see who it is, you can use a couple of double-clicks to expand the face to the full thumbnail and eventually a single image view to investigate further.

[RedSanders]

Greg_S, as with so many times in the past, you continue to add to the depth of my knowledge and skill set, so thanks again!

Granted, with the number of photos and videos with which I am working, and give the age spans in the  photos of my subjects, no doubt I have made mistakes.  But, as you said, "Nor is it perfect. I have found that the greatest problems occur when naming siblings at various stages in their life."  So, the very "smart" Organizer also makes mistakes.  But, I remain amazed of how good it is at facial recognition.

I don't know how much time I have dedicated to organizing these treasured images.  And, there's still much work to be done.  I have unknown numbers of prints that I hope to scan into my collection when I have satisfactorily organized my digital copies received from many family members. I know their are other programs and web sites that can do much of the same.  But with Adobe's integration of Organizer with Premiere Elements and Photoshop Elements, and given these support communities, none of the others can meet my needs.

[Greg_S.]

@RedSanders, I am in the same situation as you.  Over the years, I have been OCD about naming family and friends in my photos.  I couldn't begin to calculate how much time I have devoted to my catalog which now numbers almost 300k media files.  And over the years, facial recognition in Elements has improved quantifiably, both with respect to recognition and performance.  Probably 7 or 8 years ago, I felt that I could manually tag photos with names faster than using the FR tool.  Now, there is no question that Elements can do the job faster than I can.

It's interesting that you mention scanning your prints.  Over the weekend, I pledged to my daughter that I would start doing the same with my thousands of photos that were taken before the digital age. 

Since it was first created, the Organizer has been my favorite piece of software.  So, I am happy to share my knowledge of the program with anyone who needs it.