Upgrade from Photoshop Elements 15 to 2020 issue

[keithg12496682]

I ve just upgraded from version 15 to 2020 without major issue in that the catalog was converted succesfuly but now the organizer seems stuck on "scanning for media" with no real idea what it's doing.

The followed folders look right - presumably that came for the previous catalog but the folder mentioned below where it's searching just never changes. This is why I suspect it's stuck.

I could terminate the program but am concerned it might corrupt something and I don't want any major work to recreate what is a good catalog.

Could it be rescanning for facial images etc etc on what is probably a catalog of about 16000 images

Can anyone explain what might be going on and how best to proceed without losing a lot of work.

Thanks

[Greg_S.]

What OS are you using?  Can you give us a screenshot of what you are seeing.  You didn't say which "folder below" is being scanned.

If your catalog has been converted, there should be no danger in stopping the process (unless your catalog is out of date and you have imported files to your computer that are not yet in the catalog).  Even if the new catalog became corrupted somehow (highly unlikely), you still have your old Elements 15 catalog which can be converted again if necessary.

And, yes, facial recognition (and other auto-analysis) takes up a lot of resources and can be slowing things down. 

[keithg12496682]

Many thanks for the quick reply.

I am using Windows 10 and alls up to date.

Having checked the task manager I saw very little evidence of any  CPU usage for the running program ( less than 1% ) so since it had been running for over an hour thought it was safe to use the "Close" button even though it was still saying "searching for media".

Fortunately it did close then all looked as it was on the old version 15 - media, people etc etc

I've since closed the program down and re launched it  and all seems ok at first glance.

Not sure whether you know the answer but one of the main reasons i upgraded was to get better performance on facial recognition which some reviews claim to be much better - problem is I don't know how this will be done in the upgrade process e.g does it take everything that has been confirmed from the old catalog then start re scanning faces again - if so how do I know it's doing it and is there anyway to manually invoke it or start a rescan process. In the last version I spent hours naming faces but still had massive numbers of "small stacks" many of which were the same and should have been picked up earlier. This was my hope that the 2020 version would be better.

Anyway thanks again for the reply 

[Greg_S.]

I don't know for sure whether the updated program rescans the catalog for face recognition.  But all existing stacks (named and unnamed) are carried over as part of the catalog conversion process.

I would say that there has been a vast improvement in FR since 2015, and in particular, EO 2020 does a much better job of creating large stacks of the same person.  That does not mean it is perfect, and you may still have a large number of small stacks of the same person which you would expect to be joined in a single stack.  I have had many cases where the same image shot in jpeg/raw formats has the face in different stacks.  I have had stacks of my family members contain as many as a thousand media files.

It is possible to reset face analysis in the Edit>Preferences>Media Analysis dialog.  However, if you do this, you will lose all of the faces you have named.  The files will still be tagged with the People tag, but in the Named People room, the thumbnails will be generic until you reassociate the face with a tag.  And you cannot undo the reset.  However, you could copy the catalog (by copying the catalog folder to a new location), open the catalog copy and reset the face analysis on the copy to see whether it gives you better results.

[keithg12496682]

Many thanks for the reply.

I think the upgrade looks as though it doesn't do a rescan so I presume all the unamed people stacks came from the previous catalog. so at this stage I guess I get no benefit from the 2020 improved scan system unless I do a complete reset which as you say deletes all the hard work done over the years naming people manually.

Just to clarify your last paragraph though - if I did invoke a reset are you saying that peoples names would still be in the database and still associated with the media and would still be accessible in "people tags" ?

I am a bit confused how the "people tag" can be disconnected from the "named people" tab 

At the moment it looks as though I've got about 3500 unamed small stacks - many of which are really the same person ( which is dissappointing ) .

So, do I sacrifice all the work I've done to manually link names in the hope that a new scan on PSE2020 after a reset would provide a better result ?

And finally just to confirm your last point if I did wish to test this out all I need to do is copy the "***catalog" folder from it's default location to a separate drive somewhere then copy it back if the results were no better.

Thanks for the info 

[Greg_S.]

Keith said:

Just to clarify your last paragraph though - if I did invoke a reset are you saying that peoples names would still be in the database and still associated with the media and would still be accessible in "people tags" ?

Yes, the People tags will remain.  But if you go into the Named People room and click on a name, all you will see is a generic thumbnail.  Also, if you have People Recognition turned on under the View menu, when you hover over a recognized face, you will be asked to add a name, even though the person's People tag is attached to the photo.

Keith said:

I am a bit confused how the "people tag" can be disconnected from the "named people" tab

Once a file has been passed through Face Recognition, a small text file (.json) is created for each photo in your catalog.  As I understand it, that file contains the coordinates for where the face appears in the photo.  It also links the face with the name that you tag the photo with.  Resetting faces deletes all the .json files but not the tags in the catalog database. So the database will recognize the tag within the People that have been named and I believe will continue to show the person in the Named People room.  But the thumbnail from the tagged photo will not appear.

Keith said:

At the moment it looks as though I've got about 3500 unamed small stacks - many of which are really the same person ( which is dissappointing ) .

So, do I sacrifice all the work I've done to manually link names in the hope that a new scan on PSE2020 after a reset would provide a better result ?

If you can easily identify the same person in a number of stacks in the UnNamed People room, it is fairly easy to name all of the stacks with one command:  Select the stacks (using Shift-Click, Ctrl-Click and Shift+Ctrl-Click) and use the Merge People button (which replaces the Add Name button in the lower tool bar when more than one stack is selected),  The Merge People command is also available with a right-click context menu when more than one stack is selected. 

Even if you don't reset the face analysis now, you will still have the advantages of 2020 for the future.

Keith said:

And finally just to confirm your last point if I did wish to test this out all I need to do is copy the "***catalog" folder from it's default location to a separate drive somewhere then copy it back if the results were no better.

That would work.  But what I am suggesting is that if you copy the catalog to a new location and it would be too much work to completely rename the faces in your catalog, you can simply open the existing catalog (in its current location) and continue to work with that.  You could keep the copy as a backup of the catalog only (not the media) or delete it if the copy doesn't work for you.  You can find the location of your current catalog folder in the Help>System Info. . . dialog.

[Greg_S.]

IMPORTANT CORRECTION

I'm having second thoughts about whether generic thumbnails appear in the Named People room upon a reset of the face analysis.  It's been a while since I last did this and I may be confusing two different scenarios.  So until I have time to experiment with this, and give you a more concrete answer, please don't reset your original catalog.  Use a copy.

[keithg12496682]

That's great - thankyou so much for the information !

That's all making more sense now.

So, in the short term I think I'll experiment by copying the current catalog to a new location on the C Drive say within My Documents area then it will get backed up by my daily backup routine ( which is actually where I would prefer it anyway instead of being buried in "C:\ProgramData\Adobe\......" then I'll use the Catalog manager to point to that location and start the reset process.

If all works well them I'll leave it there and continue but if it looks like too much work then I can still use the Manage Catalog process to re establish the like to the original catalog in it's current place.

I'll also perhaps just wait to see what the outcome is after you've had time to confirm the aftert hought from your last post.

Many thanks again !

[keithg12496682]

Update : Thanks again for the help. 

After some thought I decided to try a completely new catalog and start from scratch and it's proved to be easily the best solution.

I was really pleased to see the improved performance of PSE2020 over PSE15 and as a result the entire catalog was created and analysed in less than about 5 hours on a folder of about 18000 images.

As you suggested the facial recognition is far superior and managed to get more correct matches on it's initial pass than the previous version including many hours of manual corrections.

So much so that I've now managed to clear the remaining small stacks within a few hours and can go forward now from a far better position.

Thanks again for the advice