Facial analysis crawling

[Radamo]

My catalog has over 120K photos in it.  The facial analysis is CRAWLING.  Is there a way to speed it up? After two full days only 29K have been scanned. 

[Greg_S.]

What are your computer specs? What OS and what version of Elements  are you using?  And what kind of files are in your catalog e.g. high resolution raw files or low resolution jpegs? 

Depending on your answers, you may not be too far out of the ballpark.  A large catalog can take many days, if not weeks, to fully analyze photos for face recognition. 

Also, the analysis should only be operating when your computer is inactive. So if you are doing any other work on the computer, the face recognition will be interrupted. 

If you are not already doing this, I recommend leaving your computer on overnight. 

[Radamo]

This is on a 2019 iMac 8core with 40Gb of RAM. Elements 21 running against a variety of files... Everything from Canon Raw, Olympus Raw and jpeg.  Sounds like it just will take time and hopefully does not drag on my system's performance too much while it does. Thanks for the quick reply. 

[Radamo]

I guess you can't edit a response???  Yes, I do leave on overnight. Also just changed the settings to keep system from sleeping after inactivity. Will see how that helps. 

[MichelBParis]

@Radamo 

You can edit your answer with the 'Plus' icon on the bottom of your previous post, just on the right of  'correct answer'.

[Radamo]

Doesn't seem to work on Safari and there is also a "More ..." which brought up a blank pane. Not a big deal.  Thanks though.

[Greg_S.]

Yes, definitely, stop your computer from sleeping. 

I should also add that with a large catalog such as yours the process slows down over time.  As I understand it, a comparison is made against each previously recognized face. 

IIRC, the last time I measured it, analysis started out at about 2,000 files per hour but eventually slowed to less than a thousand per hour. 

[Radamo]

Can anything help increase speed after that?  I saw someone say they shut down Elements and rebooted occasionally.  I would hate to do that if it does not help. 

[Greg_S.]

I don't think rebooting the computer will change the pace of face recognition unless, perhaps, RAM use is at its limits.  But I've never observed that happen.  On the other hand, rebooting should not interfere with the analysis.