Photos Removing Manually Placed Names

I've been digitizing a lot of old photos and I need to add names because Photos isn't recognizing people. However I'm finding that the program is removing a lot of my manual additions. Extremely frustrating as I've had to do a lot of family research to identify the people in the photos.


Sometimes it removes the names overnight, sometimes after a couple days. Last night I had an image of 20 people sitting at a banquet table. Only one person's face was hidden. Photos recognized 3 faces and I manually named the rest. Another image of 17 people standing on a porch, all faces in view, and I had to manually name all of them.


This morning the 3 recognized faces in the first image were still there, all other manually placed faces for both images were now missing.


There are some pictures I've named faces manually multiple times over the past month and the names keep disappearing. In some cases it removes someone from the People album completely after removing the names.


Extremely annoying and frustrating. As a backup I have started adding Names as keywords to photos.

Mac mini 2018 or later

Posted on Dec 31, 2022 06:44 AM

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5 replies

Jan 9, 2023 10:48 PM in response to Adam Shortt

Adam Shortt wrote:

...
I saw a number of people saying it was happening after upgrades, but mine seems to be happening even without upgrades.

Which system version is installed on your Mac? I suspect that iCloud syncing is also contributing to the problem. Manually added faces tend to vanish, if they are overlapping with automatically detected faces on other devices, if the faces are synced with iCloud.

My solution to the handling of custom faces:

  • I am only naming faces on one device, only on my Mac with the newest system version to avoid name conflicts from devices with different system versions.
  • After a system upgrade and after importing many new photos, I am waiting until the automatic scan for faces has been completed before adding any custom faces, which could take several weeks. This avoids conflicts between automatically detected faces and manually added faces.


Dec 31, 2022 06:59 AM in response to Adam Shortt

Keep using the keywords as a backup to save the named faces.

For family groups with many added faces names I am also taking a screenshot of the faces circles and the names below the faces and add the screenshot to the Photos Library, so I can remember, which name belongs to which face.


In my library I have occasionally see the manually named faces tags vanish after a system upgrade or update that has improved the face detection algorithm. Then Photos will repeat the faces scan and some faces might be detected in a slightly shifted position.

Dec 31, 2022 08:50 AM in response to Adam Shortt

Name tagging is the flimsiest feature of Photos. I wish there were a way to disable the face-scanning process, because I think that's the root of the problem. I'd happily enter every name manually if I could be assured that they wouldn't disappear.


I wish Apple would fix this. People have been posting about this problem for 10+ years, but as far as I know, nothing has been done to address it.


-matt

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Photos Removing Manually Placed Names

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