I have tried several times to create a smart album with the criteria of just one person and just favorites of that person. Even though there are 4k photos for my favorites and many of that person who is labeled, these combined criteria come up with 0 entries for the album. My other smart albums by date don't have this problem. What's up, Sequoia?!
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 15.6
One problem with Photos for Mac is, that Photos may be showing a different name for the person in the People&Pets album from the one it is using internally, for example a nickname or a different sort order for the first name and last name. The way the name is shown in Photos will depend on the Settings in the Contacts. If you search for the full name (with "Person is ...."), it will help to use the suggested names from the pop up menu instead of typing the name yourself. If the person has been split over several people albums, it can help to search for the first name and the last name separately with two "person includes" rules combined by "Match all".
Try to search first for the name only, before you add the restriction to the favorites. This way you can test how Photos has stored the name internally.
And check that no filter is set, that might exclude photos.
One problem with Photos for Mac is, that Photos may be showing a different name for the person in the People&Pets album from the one it is using internally, for example a nickname or a different sort order for the first name and last name. The way the name is shown in Photos will depend on the Settings in the Contacts. If you search for the full name (with "Person is ...."), it will help to use the suggested names from the pop up menu instead of typing the name yourself. If the person has been split over several people albums, it can help to search for the first name and the last name separately with two "person includes" rules combined by "Match all".
Try to search first for the name only, before you add the restriction to the favorites. This way you can test how Photos has stored the name internally.
And check that no filter is set, that might exclude photos.
May I suggest a workaround to the smart album.
1 - open the Keyword pane (⌘+K).
2 - add a keyword for every person you want to have have in a smart album, i.e. all immediate family and extended family.
3 - go to the People and Pets section and click on a person.
4 - under the top phots click on the Show More link:
5 - select the first photo in the Show More and select all (⌘+A).
6 - bring up the Keyword pane and add the keyword for that particular person.
7 - as new photos are added to the library apply the appropriate keyword to those with people in it.
8 - repeat Steps 3 - 6 for each persons in the People & Pets section of the libraray
9 - create a Smart Album with the criteria "Keyword is 'xxxx'" for each person.
As you add photos to the library and keyword them they will show up in the Smart Album immediately.
I've done the above for my 55,000 family Photos library. It's easy to get photos with a given person in them or with two people in them with a smart album for 2 keywords.
Just some food for thought.
Perhaps you should include a screenshot
Here I've picked Matt out of the list of people albums-- I didn't try to type it in. I got 420 hits. Clearly the problem is not Sequoia. What are you doing that's different?
Is this occurring with one specific person, or others as well?
You might try rebuilding the Photos database, or maybe rebuild the Spotlight index.
I cannot reproduce the problem. I created a smart album like this:
I am not in the habit of favoriting photos, so initially the smart album was empty; but once I favorited one photo it immediately appeared.
This is why I’m on this forum, because this method isn’t working for me. Even if I leave the empty smart album open, it doesn’t populate with the person/favorites, even though I can see the properly name tagged person and favorited images in the photo library.
"smart album" for person not populating sequoia
