Automatic Face recognition

[Stefanjan]

I initially added just my image folders to an imatch database.

Turned on automatic face recognition and started working through the unallocated images.

Having found how good imatch is for searching, I added non photo folders which I think was a mistake with automatic face recognition as I have thousands of unallocated faces which are not real people.

I like the idea of automatic face recognition as I add new images.

How do you deal with this. Ideally I would like to exclude non photo folders from face recognition but don't think there is a facility to do this.

Do I only do manual face recognition on selected folders or do I remove non photo folders from the database.

I appreciate I can have more than one database but switching between the two just for a search is not practical.

My inclination is to leave automatic face recognition on and remove non photo folders from the database.

[Mario]

This is why automatic face recognition is off by default.

IMatch cannot know if your "other" files (whatever format) contains faces. Even video or PDF files may contain faces.
There is no way to know, without actually searching for faces.
IMatch automatically skips files which produce no thumbnail / cache image.

Face recognition and face matching is usually quite fast.
I've made a quick test. A folder with 1,500 mixes files (RAW, JPG, other) was processed in just about 90 seconds on my PC equipped with a 12 core Ryzen CPU. Database size 150,000 files.

I recommend you turn automatic face recog off for your situation.
Then select all files you want to let IMatch search for faces (e.g. by file format or whatever) and trigger the face recognition for these files only using Ctrl+M, F
Do this when you don't need IMatch for some time, e.g. over night.

Once you have processed the bulk of files, you can enable automatic face recognition again.

[Stefanjan]

Once you have processed the bulk of files, you can enable automatic face recognition again.

It's not the face recognition that's a problem. It seems to work very fast, it's the manual work of correction afterwards.
I turned off automatic face recognition last night. Once I have cleaned up all the photos I'm interested in and turn automatic recognition back on, won't imatch detect all the images in my non photo folders for example music folders, local website copies etc.

This morning, I discovered in Media & Folders, I could select the folders I wasn't interested in, select all the files then ignore unconfirmed and unassigned faces. This seems like a good solution although with automatic face detection turned on,  I guess when I add files to these folders unwanted face recognition will kick in for the new files. It would be good if there was a way to permanently flag folders that should be ignored for face recognition.

[Mario]

I don't understand the problem, sorry..

Yes, when you have automatic face recognition enabled, new and updated files will be processed (unless they already contain faces).
If you don't want this, turn automatic face recognition off (which is the default) and then run face recognition only on the folders / files you want to and when you want to.

I don't know about your workflow, but usually folders are not updated all the time. Unless you are still working on the files on the folder, making changes in external applications.

[Stefanjan]

I don't understand the problem, sorry..

If I turn automatic face recognition back on after allocating existing photos and then for example rip more music albums to my music folder then imatch will pick all the faces on the album covers. Similarly if I download a backup of one of the websites I manage face recognition would run against all the photos.

For the time being I will leave face recognition off.

[Mario]

If I turn automatic face recognition back on after allocating existing photos and then for example rip more music albums to my music folder then imatch will pick all the faces on the album covers. Similarly if I download a backup of one of the websites I manage face recognition would run against all the photos.

Yes. This is the purpose of automatic face recognition. It automatically checks new and updated images for faces.
Automatic face recognition is off by default.

[Jingo]

One way around this is to have separate databases for mixed media... say - photos/videos in one DB, documents in another, music is another... then, you can have unique settings per DB and keep things flowing.  Otherwise, just keep the automatic processes turned off.

[Stefanjan]

Having looked in to this a bit further, do I understand that if I turn automatic detection back on then it will detect faces in all the photos I have previously set to Ignore or Delete the face annotation?

[Mario]

The face recog is triggered manually by you, or when IMatch finds new and updated files.
Files which already have face annotations are not processed again by the automatic face recognition.