Can't add a certain person's name to his photo

You wrote:

"A list of all the Andys in my address book appears, and I click on his name. Nothing happens. The list goes away, but Andy is still named 'unnamed'."

This can happen, if Andy's photos have been merged with someone else. To fix this, try to create a new "People+Pets" album for Andy, without using his Contact card. Enter a slightly different nickname where it is showing "unnamed", then hit "Return" and ignore the suggested Andys.

Can you create a new Andy album this way? If you can, check all People albums for other people, if there are some misnamed faces of Andy and reject the wrong name. Then assign the new name for Andy.

You can switch back to the original name from the Contacts, once the new album for Andy is working again.

Try to

Find a picture of Andy that has a name, and change the name to Andrew. If that works, then there will be a new People album named Andrew.

The trick, as léonie was saying, is that Photos may have learned that Andy's features have been conflated with someone else. If you find Andy's name attached to someone else, you may have to rename that person, as well, and produce another new People album, there, too. Changing the names makes the old albums empty so that Photos can unlearn those attributes. léonie is the expert on this.

Let us know how it goes…

Martin S Taylor wrote: I can't find a picture of Andy that has a name. All of the pictures of him are "unnamed".

And you can't add any name to the "unnamed" Andys? Wow-- that's weird! Usually, "unnamed" means that photos recognizes that this as a face. That's the hard part, and from there it's just regular computer information database stuff.

Just to narrow things down, try these steps, one at a time:

• Restart the computer (of course)
• Re-start in Safe Mode. This bypasses certain potentially disruptive processes, and it often helps. Safe Mode is different for different computers, so see this: 

           Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support 

• Use another library if you have one, or make a small test Library with a few pictures in it and see if the same thing happens. You can create a new Library by closing Photos and then option-clicking on the Photos icon.
• Make a new user and see if the same problem recurs with it.  This is a bit harder, because a new user can't access a different user's stuff. You would need to move your Library out of your own user's folder up to the general "Users" folder. 
• Rebuild your Photos Library--close Photos and re-launch by option-command-clicking the app icon. If you use iCloud Photos, it’s possible that this will cause a re-sync that lasts long enough to make you nervous.

The idea is to find out if the problem is with the Library, with your account, or with caches and login items, and stuff like that. One of these steps may fix the problem, but their failure to work also helps figure out what's happening.

Let us know what happens…

With double entries in the list it helps to make a very typical face the key photo for the "Andy" album, so you can easily recognize which entry in the list of suggested names to use.

If there is not yet an album for the person, only wrong matches in the drop down list, ***'t click any of the entries - just enter the name you want to use and hit the return key. We do not have to use the suggestions, and there do not need to be suggestions or Contact cards for the people we want to name.

I just named the moon "Frau Luna", as a test:

[Edited by Moderator]

Give this a try:

1 - create a new, empty test library.

2 - import a couple of photos of Andy

3 - try adding his name to the photo.

4 - if successful close the test library, open your current library and try adding his name again.

5 - if the test library is unsuccessful log into another user library and repeat the test library there. That will tell us if the problem is system wide or limited to your user account.

The names and faces are not stored with the picture itself, but information goes in Photos' database (along with absolutely every thing else about the picture.) When you repair/restore the Library, you're having Photos recheck all the connections between the database and data files, fixing connections that don't make sense. Everybody should still be there, but names (and other data) may get juggled a bit-- hopefully in the right direction! There shouldn't be a loss of information.

When we get a new OS, there may be new algorithms that work better to identify faces, so it may all have to start over again. Then it will take a few days for things to settle down.

All the data about pictures in Photos is contained in the database. Spotlight uses the database. (Now it does-- it used to ignore Photos.)

When I search for Richard, I get 1400 hits. But I use the main search field just for quick searches. Most of the time I would use a Smart Album, and for people I use keywords.

The Person albums we've been talking about are rather ephemeral, as you've seen. You can't really depend on them finding every instance, or even being exactly the same in the next OS. Many of us use the Person Album mostly as a help in adding keywords to pictures. In the Richard person album I selected all and added "Richard" as a keyword to them. Other pictures I find that have "Richard" in them, but just the back of the head, maybe, I add the Richard keyword, but that picture may never show up in the Richard album. Nonetheless, I can find it when I want. This applies to everyone I want to identify. With keywords and Smart Albums, I can find pictures that have Richard and my daughter together, and without in-laws. Always a good thing.

Spotlight, by the way, works the same way-- it builds a database for what it can find anywhere. It's busy hunting through our files just like Photos is busy hunting through our pictures.

The coolest use of the Face names is with those family pictures with a whole bunch of people you've never met.

Martin, the search field in the main toolbar in the Finder and also Siri are using the Spotlight index, but only entries from your system photos library will currently appear in the Spotlight index. I have not seen any results from my secondary photo libraries in spotlight searches for a long time.

Like Richard, I am adding the names for named faces as keywords. They are much more stable than the faces tags, which can break whenever the a system update changes the algorithm for face recognition. Also they are syncing reliably between my several devices with different system version. Particularly manual added faces circles may vanish after a system upgrade and are nit syncing well with iCloud. And in the long run the keywords will help, if I should decide to switch to a different app or even away from Apple. Thanks to the keywords I did not lose named faces, when I migrated from iPhoto to Aperture and then to Photos. How to use Keywords to Back Up the Named Faces in Photos and Improve the Search for People … - Apple Community

Martin S Taylor wrote: repairing the library…seems to have done the trick.

Great! As a test I had made a new Library with 1500 pictures, all with faces, and over night it had recognized all the faces that it had seen in the Library that they had come from. Being asleep, I don't know when it really finished, of course, but I thought that was pretty good. It shouldn't take too long.

You should really do the keyword thing with names in case naming gets worse!

It's possible that Photos naming has gotten confused. You could try the same thing with Martin as we suggested with Andy-- unmaking Martin to empty the Martin album and renaming your pictures "Marty" or something.

Or you may need to go to Settings>General>Reset People & Pets and start over. I've always looked at that rather warily, and I've never tried it, so I'm not sure of the implications. But if you've used keywords with names, you can reconstruct with a minimum of pain.

Martin S Taylor wrote: … I have solved the mystery of why three photos of my cat appear:

So cool! Cats get into everything!

I also found a photo which wouldn't allow me to add a keyword.

It sounds pretty weird. Can that picture be edited--can you go into Edit Mode with it? I not sure if I've seen this. I imagine that if I had, I would have closed and reopened Photos, or I would nave re-booted the Mac.

Anyhow, let's wait until it's completely finished indexing and see what happens.

Best practice!

if a face is marked as 'unnamed', is that Photos's final decision, or might it realise who the face is during later indexing? There are some 'unnamed' faces which are pretty similar to those it has correctly identified.

Final is never really final, because it could change in the next OS. I have pictures that were unrecognized as faces and to which I added a little circle and name-- but they were recognized in a later OS.

If Photos thinks that an "unnamed" face has some of the right features, it may come up when you choose "Review More Photos."

If you haven't found this, it's sort of hidden in the Person Album-- just scroll to see below all the pictures.

In any case, you can type a name into the "unnamed" field. This adds that picture to the appropriate People Album, and it helps in the identification of other recognized faces. That is unlike manually added faces using the little circle--that puts the picture into the person's album, but doesn't affect identification of others.