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Aperture suggests the same name for all photos #1
Jennifer McCaffery's picture
by Jennifer McCaffery
December 8, 2010 - 4:13am

Newly installed Aperture 3 a couple of days ago and imported my iphoto library. Everything seemed to be going along fine as far as faces learning and suggesting names for faces, then it all went to pot. Now the same name is given as a suggestion for every single photo. I checked that particular individual to make sure there were no “stray” photos listed there, they are all correct. Cannot find this problem reported on any forums so far…..any ideas?

Jennifer McCaffery's picture
by Jennifer McCaffery
December 10, 2010 - 3:20am

Yes, I’ve ensured all of the faces under that face collection are in fact the correct person and they are.
If I manually enter the correct name, it seems to “take” fine. It’s just that as it presents more people, they all still get labelled with the same suggested name.
I have not done any library rebuilds or repairs, I did toss the preferences though.

PhotoJoseph's picture
by PhotoJoseph
December 10, 2010 - 6:28am

Jennifer,

OK why don’t you try some Library repair-work next. Please ensure your Library is backed up before proceeding. Even if you are using Time Machine and/or the Vault, I advise having a straight-up copy of your Library before doing any major work (upgrades, repair, etc.). It’s just so much easier to recover if something goes wrong. If you can, just make a copy of your Library in the Finder—even if it’s a duplicate on the same drive, that’s fine. This is only a temporary backup.

Launch Aperture while holding Command-Option down. You’ll get a dialog with a few repair options. I’m going to guess that Repair Permissions (the first choice) isn’t going to be enough, so go ahead and try the Repair Database (second choice). If that doesn’t work quit and relaunch, again with Command Option held down, and go for the full Rebuild Database.

Let us know what happens there. If this doesn’t solve if, we can remove the entire Faces database and start over, but that’s pretty drastic.

-Joseph @ApertureExpert

@PhotoJoseph
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Jennifer McCaffery's picture
by Jennifer McCaffery
December 13, 2010 - 5:32am

Interesting. When I did the “Repair Database”….the name suggestions switched to another person’s name…..but still it was suggesting that name for every single photo. I then did a full Rebuild Database, and it remained the same. Hmmmmm, very perplexing!

Jennifer McCaffery's picture
by Jennifer McCaffery
January 6, 2011 - 8:15am

Thanks for your help Joseph. I did want to post an update to all of this and let you know that I did end up deleting the Face.db file, and re-scanning the library. Everything seems to be running smoothly again!
Many thanks to you!

PhotoJoseph's picture
by PhotoJoseph
December 8, 2010 - 9:58pm

Jennifer,

I was waiting a couple of days to see if anyone else chimed in, hoping someone has had this same issue. I’ve never come across it before I’m afraid. Let’s see what we can figure out.

When you say there are no “stray” photos, does that mean you’re editing a face and ensuring that all the faces under that face collection are in fact the right person?

What happens if you manually enter the right name; does it take that, or is it reverting to this single name?

Finally, have you done any library rebuilds or repairs yet?

-Joseph @ApertureExpert

@PhotoJoseph
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PhotoJoseph's picture
by PhotoJoseph
December 16, 2010 - 4:09am

Jennifer,

Wow… weirder and weirder.

How much time have you invested in naming so far? Are you willing to throw the naming all away and start from scratch?

If so… PLEASE back up your entire library before proceeding. And by backing up, I don’t just mean run the Vault or ensuring Time Machine is up-to-date. Copy the library to another drive, and just leave it there as an easy to return to, immediate backup. Just in case.

Open Aperture. Open the Preferences and disable Faces. Quit Aperture.

Locate the Aperture Library in the Finder (by default it’s in your Pictures folder). Back it up (copy to an alternate location, or at least duplicate it on the existing hard drive).

Right click on the Library and choose “Show Package Contents”. Open the Database folder. Delete the file Faces.db. Close this window. (Screenshot)

Relaunch Aperture. Open the preferences and turn Faces back on. It will now have to rescan your library, so depending on how big it is, you may want to leave it running overnight. Or more. Mine took many days to complete.

And, start naming faces, and hope that this problem is gone for good!!

-Joseph @ApertureExpert

@PhotoJoseph
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