Will splitting a catalog damage the facial recognition information?

[timandbethhall2020]

If I choose to export a portion of my catalog to a smaller subset, does the facial recogntion information follow it? 

[MichelBParis]

"If I choose to export a portion of my catalog to a smaller subset, does the facial recogntion information follow it? "

There is no way to export as catalog in Elements like in Lightroom. If you export as new files, the selected files will be written in a single folder of your choice. They will include the keywords/tags, captions and ratings you have written to files, but no specific catalog informations like albums, version sets and stacks. They won't be in any catalog and if you import them in a new catalog, they'll just keep what has been written to files. I don't use face recognition at all, so wait for comments from other users.

Splitting catalogs is not recognized as a way to get more speed, although there can be additional constraints for that feature with FR, I am not sure about it.

To really split catalogs, you would create a catalog copy and delete the unwanted files. With a big catalog, it's extremely long to delete a lot of files and the process may fail. You would have to delete by many smaller batches (a few thousands max depending on your available RAM). As I understand it, that process would keep the face recognition and keep your folder structure since no change will be done to the files on your drive(s).

[timandbethhall2020]

Thank you! I have seen your answers on many posts. So may I ask this: If I use FR to find "John" on 100 photos, and I name the stack under the People tab "John" does that create a tag named "John" on all 100 photos? If not, how do I mass tag people? As an example I have over 2,500 images of one family member.

I have no problem using FR once and naming all the people. I just don't want to lose that if and when I split the catalog.

[timandbethhall2020]

Thanks again!

[MichelBParis]

Thank you! I have seen your answers on many posts. So may I ask this: If I use FR to find "John" on 100 photos, and I name the stack under the People tab "John" does that create a tag named "John" on all 100 photos? If not, how do I mass tag people? As an example I have over 2,500 images of one family member.

I have no problem using FR once and naming all the people. I just don't want to lose that if and when I split the catalog.

Wait for answers from other users like Greg_S who are using face recognition on big catalogs.

There are two different actions in managing people with face recognition.

- face recognition itself, which implies finding visual similarity and marking the location of faces in the photo

- assigning a tag to 'name' that person.

The second action does not need anything more than a keyword and is available in the normal 'media' tags with your own hierarchies and distinction. Contrary to many people who are organizing an already existing big library, I have been tagging people names, first names, married names, nicknames etc since 1999. I have always relied on my own recognition or trusted persons for genealogy and old family history. I have also used captions and notes to identify persons in groups. So even with old PSE versions like PSE6 I can manage and find persons with multicriteria searches. 

What I don't know exactly is how Elements uses 'stacks' for people (or places). With normal 'media' files, the information is not written to files and can't be.

I am pretty sure that Lightroom has the ability to split and merge catalogs, which should preserve any kind of stacks.

[timandbethhall2020]

Thanks!

[Greg_S.]

Michel said:

To really split catalogs, you would create a catalog copy and delete the unwanted files. With a big catalog, it's extremely long to delete a lot of files and the process may fail. You would have to delete by many smaller batches (a few thousands max depending on your available RAM). As I understand it, that process would keep the face recognition and keep your folder structure since no change will be done to the files on your drive(s).

I agree with Michel that this is the only way to split a catalog and maintain the face recognition tags.  Just to be clear, you would copy (and rename) the entire catalog folder using your OS tools.  Then, within the Organizer only, you would delete the unwanted files from the copied catalog.  However, to answer one of your questions in your other thread, I don't really see the need to divide your catalog into pieces.  I have no experience whatsoever with Mac hardware, so I don't know whether you will get any better performance/less crashes if you use smaller catalogs.  Perhaps it may help your workflow with the time for making backups, but I know of no other advantages for splitting the catalog, and I can see a few disadvantages.  My current catalog has about 170,000 media files and I am using a computer that was built about 5 years ago. I have few problems with performance or crashes. (But I don't use the Organizer's backup tool for backing up my files.)

Now to answer your other question:

If I use FR to find "John" on 100 photos, and I name the stack under the People tab "John" does that create a tag named "John" on all 100 photos?

Yes, if you name a stack in the UnNamed People tab, all of the images in the stack will have a People tag. 

I don't know how far you are into this process (and I don't think you have told us which version of Elements you are using), but facial recognition has improved with every version of the program.  But it is not perfect.  Thus, you will see several/many stacks of the same person.  Elements 2020 has greatly improved the number of stacks that appear for a person.  I recently created a new catalog for all of my media and I ended up with some stacks of my immediate family containing several hundred media files.  However, there were also many stacks of the same person containing far less files.  Some of my family members also probably had several dozen single image "stacks".

If you have a large catalog, one tip I can offer is that you can use a filter for the UnNamed People.  For example, you can use the Timeline (Ctrl+L or Cmd+L for Mac) and select a time period to view, using the calipers at each end:

When you go into the People room, you will see only stacks of faces found in images within the time period.

You can also filter by Folder.  In other words, you can have the Folder panel open in the People tab.  When you select a folder, only the found faces in that folder will appear - either in the Named People tab or the UnNamed People tab. 

I had over 30,000 stacks of faces in the UnNamed People room after FR had been completed.  Although I could easily dismiss hundreds of face stacks at a time, that takes a long time.  What I am now doing is going through my UnNamed stacks a folder at a time.  This makes it easier to find the faces I want to name.  I can then use a Select All control (Cmd+A on a Mac?) for the remaining stacks and then use the Dont' Show Again button.  I believe this speeds up the process.

I think we have answered all of your questions from your other thread.  But let us know if we have missed anything or you have more questions.

[Greg_S.]

Michel said:

To really split catalogs, you would create a catalog copy and delete the unwanted files. With a big catalog, it's extremely long to delete a lot of files and the process may fail. You would have to delete by many smaller batches (a few thousands max depending on your available RAM). As I understand it, that process would keep the face recognition and keep your folder structure since no change will be done to the files on your drive(s).

I agree with Michel that this is the only way to split a catalog and maintain the face recognition tags.  Just to be clear, you would copy (and rename) the entire catalog folder using your OS tools.  Then, within the Organizer only, you would delete the unwanted files from the copied catalog.  However, to answer one of your questions in your other thread, I don't really see the need to divide your catalog into pieces.  I have no experience whatsoever with Mac hardware, so I don't know whether you will get any better performance/less crashes if you use smaller catalogs.  Perhaps it may help your workflow with the time for making backups, but I know of no other advantages for splitting the catalog, and I can see a few disadvantages.  My current catalog has about 170,000 media files and I am using a computer that was built about 5 years ago. I have few problems with performance or crashes. (But I don't use the Organizer's backup tool for backing up my files.)

Now to answer your other question:

If I use FR to find "John" on 100 photos, and I name the stack under the People tab "John" does that create a tag named "John" on all 100 photos?

Yes, if you name a stack in the UnNamed People tab, all of the images in the stack will have a People tag. 

I don't know how far you are into this process (and I don't think you have told us which version of Elements you are using), but facial recognition has improved with every version of the program.  But it is not perfect.  Thus, you will see several/many stacks of the same person.  Elements 2020 has greatly improved the number of stacks that appear for a person.  I recently created a new catalog for all of my media and I ended up with some stacks of my immediate family containing several hundred media files.  However, there were also many stacks of the same person containing far less files.  Some of my family members also probably had several dozen single image "stacks".

If you have a large catalog, one tip I can offer is that you can use a filter for the UnNamed People.  For example, you can use the Timeline (Ctrl+L or Cmd+L for Mac) and select a time period to view, using the calipers at each end:

When you go into the People room, you will see only stacks of faces found in images within the time period.

You can also filter by Folder.  In other words, you can have the Folder panel open in the People tab.  When you select a folder, only the found faces in that folder will appear - either in the Named People tab or the UnNamed People tab. 

I had over 30,000 stacks of faces in the UnNamed People room after FR had been completed.  Although I could easily dismiss hundreds of face stacks at a time, that takes a long time.  What I am now doing is going through my UnNamed stacks a folder at a time.  This makes it easier to find the faces I want to name.  I can then use a Select All control (Cmd+A on a Mac?) for the remaining stacks and then use the Dont' Show Again button.  I believe this speeds up the process.

I think we have answered all of your questions from your other thread.  But let us know if we have missed anything or you have more questions.

[timandbethhall2020]

Thank you for that. Very helpful. But I have a follow in question I hope that is okay. 

when I asked about naming a stack of 100 pics John, what I meant was will it create a boba fide tag for each photo. Then I could search tags for John in the event that the facial data is lost or if I choose to export the photos. Does that make sense?

Macbook Late 2015, PSE 2020

[Greg_S.]

Yes, when you add a name to a face stack in the UnNamed People tab, it creates a keyword tag which can be saved to the file's metadata (either by using the Save metadata to file command in the File menu, or by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+W for Windows or Cmd+W for Mac).  The metadata will also be saved if you edit the file and save it in the Photoshop Editor.  If you export the file as a copy and import it again into the Organizer, the keyword tag will be recognized by Elements and you will be given the option to include the keyword in your catalog.  But the tag will only be seen as a regular keyword tag, not as a People tag, because the face recognition information is not saved in the file.  However, as soon as the file is imported it will be analyzed for face recognition and a new naming of the face in a stack will add a People tag to the existing keyword tag.

Whether the tag will be recognized by another program will depend on how the other program reads the metadata.  The tag will be recognized as a keyword via Windows file Properties.  I have no idea about Macs.

[timandbethhall2020]

Thank you Greg! I will conduct some small tests and see. 

I am very appreciative of your help!