Disable iPhoto Faces?

I don't think that you can. I hope I'm wrong but I even had a quick google and it appears you can't disable it from what I've read. It's a shame because a lot of people find the face recognition really problematic.

but is this okay to delete what you're currently have in the faces folder & still keep the full size picture?

Faces is now becoming a problem for me. There doesn't seem to be any way to turn off this unwanted and useless "feature" without hacking the iPhoto database files. What kind of idiot makes a resource-sucking function that can't be turned off?

I have some landscape photos right now that iPhoto is insisting contain Faces that I need to label. Go away! This software is literally crashing my Mac, freezing up and Unexpectedly Quitting, and all because this Faces junk is sucking up all the CPU and RAM. Leave Faces to Facebook, and let me import my temporary files and run my slideshow! This new iPhoto software feels like I'm running on a 400 MHz G4 with 32 MB RAM. If it can't tell the difference between inanimate objects in a landscape and a person's smiling face, what exactly is it doing with all the system resources?

I have all of these duplicate, low resolution photos in my iPhoto library - I'm assuming they have something to do with faces, which I've never activated and have never felt the desire or need to use, Seems silly to me. From what i read, there doesn't seem to be any to disable this "feature", so am I stuck with all this worthless crap in my library? I'm using iPhoto 9. Because it's difficult to tell from the thumbnail which are the original (real) photos and which are the junk, I end up wasting a lot of time clicking on low-res crap (which I trash when I find it). Faces is a joke!

How to remove faces files from iPhoto

I am appalled that Apple did not have the vision while creating the "faces" feature. In fact my experience with mac so far suggest that windows platform is more user friendly in most applications.
However one good thing about faces feature is that all the files of faces are saved as "filename_face.jpg".
So to delete all the faces from your iphoto library, All you have to do is open Finder; search for "_face" in the toolbar search box. You can then delete all the files or selected files if you wish.

umbilical said:

faces really sucks! and iphoto needs be more simple... I dont install it, I hate it, I prefer organize my pics in simple folders with good names... I use a better finder rename, an app for rename files...

keep it simple!

(just my opinion)

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I just bought an iMAC and the techie failed to transfer 3/4ths of my iPhotos, none of my bookmarks, addresses, etc. that I had had from my Mac Book Pro and yet "faces" went nuts. I had just under 7,000 pictures and "faces" created over 10,000 _face.jpg files. There was one of a guy's crotch (a face? not). That was stupid. I am going to take the advice of keeping most of my photo's in a separate file... if I can manage to do that while keeping iPhoto up and running. This is so frustrating and so incompetent of Apple to do this. I didn't seem to have this "faces" problem when I was using snow leopard.

I liked the idea of using finder and putting in _face and it bringing up all the face photos. But this is going to get old if I have to keep doing this. No wonder the iMAC is a terabyte in space... it's needed to store "faces." Grrr!

Faces does not seem auto run when you launch iPhoto 09 in SL. The new "improved" version , well that auto runs in Lion. The way to stop it is when you launch iPhoto 11, you will see a small rotating wheel next to Faces. Click on it and you will be taken to a screen for Faces where you are given the option to pause the thing. I was lucky, I caught it early.

Faces is in there by design. Either some idiot 20 something moron thought this would be "cool" for everyone and thus imposed it upon the rest of us or there is something more nefarious going on here. I don't need this POS crap.

If Apple continues to rope everyone in with imposition of this idiot "features" and closed, proprietary formats like the (i) series, I may leave the platform, all together. Once "cool" Apple has become mainstream, big corp. At this point in what is becoming the irony of all ironies, the Windows platform is starting to look more open, extensible and flexible. Apple keeps this up, they are going to lose customers by the boatload. Remember - you as the customer - always have that choice. Apple gives us the choice to opt out of silly, clunky, memory hogs like Faces - or we opt out ourselves.
Rgds

Aperture 3 allows you to shut off faces, and most pros that I know do not use faces at all. I never realized that iPhoto did not allow it to be disabled.

I think that storing photos in finder windows by date and function works well to "store" photos... but is is one of the worse choices that you can make to "use" pictures. For those of you who are serious about your photography and want a better solution than iPhoto... I would recommend either Adobe Lightroom or Apple Aperture 3. I personally chose A3 but it is probably a coin toss regarding the capabilities of the two programs.

/Jim

I just saw iPhoto Faces calling a tree trunk a face. Apple, please don't make unwanted features mandatory, especially when they have the intelligence of an e-mail worm.

You gotta love Faces. That's why I use Aperture.

Wait, this is iPhoto 11, right (aka, the-highly-problomatic-iPhoto)?

My Mac is freezing up again. It's compulsory use of iPhoto Faces, trying to scan my photographs of the sky for faces. If you find a face in the sky, it's going to be a Second Coming or something like that. Apple, turn... it... off! Dumb, resource-wasting programming!

Faces is another one of Apple's many poorly thought out disasters. I turn mine off and the dam thing turns itself back on. What a POS and Apple seems to care less as long as they keep selling their stuff.

I use Aperture (not iPhoto). It also has the "faces" feature... but every good photographer that I know turns it off. Luckily, Aperture does keep it off.

Keywords seems to be much more robust than faces.

/Jim

I just tried: (in iPhoto 11 9.4.3 on OSX10.4.8, after having already imported some photos and so I had faces waiting to be identified)
Exit iPhoto
Open Terminal, cd to iPhoto's database directory (which on my machine is under Pictrues/iPhoto Library.photolibrary/, but that might be different on your system.):
> cd Pictures/iPhoto Library.photolibrary/Database/apdb
Disable read and write on the Faces database:
> chmod -w Faces.db
> chmod -r Faces.db
Disable read and write on the directory where Faces keeps thumbnails:
> cd ../Faces
> chmod -r *
> chmod -w *
When I opened iPhoto again, it has a "getting started with Faces" page if you click on the Faces tab. The wheel spins briefly if I import photos, but does not lock the system. No new Files are created in Faces, and time-stamp on Faces.db does not change.

I'll post again if I find that this solution has problems!

b

Surely when viewing the 'info' box you just click on the triangle next to Faces to turn it off? Or are you on about permanently turning it off?

Thank you for great solution

I'm using iPhoto 9.4.3 and OSX 10.7.5.
I tried your solution and found NO problems with the original iPhoto-Mediathek and some more *.photolibrary. As you wrote iPhoto shows the iFaces startpage, but there is no more CPU-, RAM- and HDD-consuming action. One time the faces-spinning wheel came up , but a fast click on face-menu entry led me to a page to stop the faces recognition. I never saw the "feature" again.

Thank you!

panter

P.S.: .. and yes, I sent my negative feedback about this "feature" to apple...

blackpowder1605 said:

I just tried: (in iPhoto 11 9.4.3 on OSX10.4.8, after having already imported some photos and so I had faces waiting to be identified)
Exit iPhoto
Open Terminal, cd to iPhoto's database directory (which on my machine is under Pictrues/iPhoto Library.photolibrary/, but that might be different on your system.):
> cd Pictures/iPhoto Library.photolibrary/Database/apdb
Disable read and write on the Faces database:
> chmod -w Faces.db
> chmod -r Faces.db
Disable read and write on the directory where Faces keeps thumbnails:
> cd ../Faces
> chmod -r *
> chmod -w *
When I opened iPhoto again, it has a "getting started with Faces" page if you click on the Faces tab. The wheel spins briefly if I import photos, but does not lock the system. No new Files are created in Faces, and time-stamp on Faces.db does not change.

I'll post again if I find that this solution has problems!

b

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