Picasa 3.5: How to Turn Off Face Recognition
Picasa came out with a new version last week … version 3.5. The biggest new feature is face recognition and name tags. Picasa will scan through all your photos, mark the ones with faces, and put them in a group called ‘unnamed people.’ Then, you can look at those people and give them names. After you have given a few pictures names, Picasa will try to match the other unnamed people to the ones you have identified.
This is all way cool, but it also is a bit time consuming. If you have thousands of photos, it could take 24 hours or even more for Picasa to go through the first scan. You may want to turn it off temporarily so that you can work on other things in Picasa without being interrupted. Or you may not be interested in the face recognition feature at all.
To turn it off:
- Tools / Options
- Uncheck ‘Enable Face Detection’
When you’re ready to let it resume working on face detection, you can go back and check the box again.
Related posts:
12 Comments to Picasa 3.5: How to Turn Off Face Recognition
Leave a Reply
Subscribe to Weekly Picasa Tip
Search
Categories
- Edit/Improve Photos (17)
- Getting Started (13)
- ▼Organizing (31)
- Backup and Tree View 03/03
- Backup! Backup! Backup! 09/15
- Combining Stars and Tags 09/22
- Don't Delete your Original Photos 05/17
- Don't Delete your Original Photos 05/17
- Five Deadly Sins of Picasa 01/07
- Importing and Folders 02/02
- Moving Folders with Picasa 10/28
- Organizing with Sortable Dates 04/22
- People Albums – View Whole Picture 02/08
- Picasa 3.5 Import Screen 10/06
- Picasa 3.5 released 09/23
- Picasa 3.5: How to Turn Off Face Recognition 09/29
- Picasa Tip: “Cancel unfinished operations?” 04/14
- Picasa Tip: Different ways to Save 08/04
- Picasa Tip: Finding Duplicate Pictures 01/13
- Picasa Tip: Folders and Subfolders 06/03
- Picasa Tip: How folders get Dated 03/04
- Picasa Tip: Import from Camera 02/17
- Picasa Tip: Keeping Pictures in Order 05/13
- Picasa Tip: Photos as Wallpaper 02/03
- Picasa Tip: Picture Information 09/02
- Picasa Tip: Scanning Old Photos 01/06
- Picasa Tip: Screen Captures 04/01
- Picasa Tip: Search by Color 07/08
- Picasa Tip: To Save or Not to Save 02/11
- Picasa Tip: Use Albums 12/30
- Picasa Tip: Use Captions 01/27
- Picasa Tip: When your pictures get "All Messed UP" 01/20
- Storing Pictures on an External Hard Drive 06/30
- Using Albums and Temporary Albums 02/18
- Photo (4)
- ▼Picasa (75)
- Backup and Tree View 03/03
- Backup! Backup! Backup! 09/15
- Better Pictures 10/14
- Capture One Shot from a Video 01/30
- Combining Stars and Tags 09/22
- Congratulations on your eBook Purchase! 11/19
- Cover Slides and Collages 12/10
- Dark Photo? Use Fill Light 09/09
- Do you take crooked photos? 11/24
- Don't Delete your Original Photos 05/17
- Don't Delete your Original Photos 05/17
- Emailing Photos with Picasa 05/02
- Five Deadly Sins of Picasa 01/07
- Framing a Picture 12/29
- Importing and Folders 02/02
- Managing Digital Photos with Google's Picasa 01/15
- Moving Folders with Picasa 10/28
- People Albums – View Whole Picture 02/08
- Picasa 3 and Video Files 12/04
- Picasa 3.5 Import Screen 10/06
- Picasa 3.5 released 09/23
- Picasa 3.5: How to Turn Off Face Recognition 09/29
- Picasa Book updated to Version 3.5 11/19
- Picasa Tip: “Cancel unfinished operations?” 04/14
- Picasa Tip: 4 Clicks to Dramatically Improve your Photos 06/10
- Picasa Tip: A Picasa Plug-In for Live-Writer 07/14
- Picasa Tip: Add a Watermark to your photos 11/11
- Picasa Tip: Automatic Updates 11/19
- Picasa Tip: Blue Skies 05/06
- Picasa Tip: Cut thru the Haze 08/20
- Picasa Tip: Different ways to Save 08/04
- Picasa Tip: Download photos from a Web Album 06/24
- Picasa Tip: Fill-in Preprinted Forms 03/10
- Picasa Tip: Finding Duplicate Pictures 01/13
- Picasa Tip: Flipping Photos 03/19
- Picasa Tip: Folders and Subfolders 06/03
- Picasa Tip: How folders get Dated 03/04
- Picasa Tip: I'm Feeling Lucky 04/07
- Picasa Tip: Import from Camera 02/17
- Picasa Tip: Keeping Pictures in Order 05/13
- Picasa Tip: Make a Banner Collage 12/23
- Picasa Tip: Make a Movie 07/29
- Picasa Tip: Make your own Photo Holiday Cards 11/04
- Picasa Tip: Moving folders to a USB Hard Drive 11/25
- Picasa Tip: Nested Folders 12/02
- Picasa Tip: Out of Focus? I meant that! 01/13
- Picasa Tip: Outdoor-Indoor Collage 03/24
- Picasa Tip: Photos as Wallpaper 02/03
- Picasa Tip: Picasa to Facebook 06/19
- Picasa Tip: Picasa Web Albums 02/24
- Picasa Tip: Picture Information 09/02
- Picasa Tip: Printing options, White Borders 08/12
- Picasa Tip: Save Edits and Resize with Export 10/28
- Picasa Tip: Scanning Old Photos 01/06
- Picasa Tip: Screen Captures 04/01
- Picasa Tip: Search by Color 07/08
- Picasa Tip: Synchronized Web Albums 04/28
- Picasa Tip: To Save or Not to Save 02/11
- Picasa Tip: Use Albums 12/30
- Picasa Tip: Use Captions 01/27
- Picasa Tip: Using the text tool 04/22
- Picasa Tip: Web Albums default settings 12/16
- Picasa Tip: What happened to Sharpen? 05/28
- Picasa Tip: When your pictures get "All Messed UP" 01/20
- Picasa tip: Your photos as Screensaver 12/09
- Picasa Tip:Making a Panorama 05/20
- Professional Prints 10/14
- Resizing Photo Files 07/22
- Sharpening Photos with Picasa 07/23
- Storing Pictures on an External Hard Drive 06/30
- Taking Video with your Laptop’s Camera 01/22
- Upgrading to Picasa 3.6 12/11
- Using Albums and Temporary Albums 02/18
- Webinar for Beginners to Picasa 11/29
- You have a Digital Camera ... Now What? 10/25
- picasa web albums (7)
- Sharing Photos (11)
- Show-Me Video (4)
- ▼Special Features (6)
- Videos (12)
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
- Chris Guld on Picasa 3.5: How to Turn Off Face Recognition
- Nicky on Picasa 3.5: How to Turn Off Face Recognition
- Mile on Picasa 3.5: How to Turn Off Face Recognition
- Chris Guld on Backup! Backup! Backup!
- Anna on Backup! Backup! Backup!
Think I have downloaded Picasa 3.5 but nothing shows that I have 3.5—it still show just 3…….But I think I have the face recognition feature already. Do I have 3.5 or just 3.
Thank you very much—-Art
The way to check your version is with the Help menu, then click ‘About Picasa’ You should see 3.5 there – everywhere else it just says ‘3′
Chris–thank you for your reply. However, I seem to still have Picasa 3 so I will try downloading 3.5 soon.
HI Chris,
I have maybe 30,000 pictures dating from 1957 including 3 kids, 7 grandkids and one great plus other relatives and friends…yikes. I started the scan Sunday morning right after downloading the new Picasa and it was still sorting 36 hours later. I’ve turned it off and on but I bet it has run 48 hours and is still finding faces. It is amazing and fascinating. I love to see whose face it “misplaces”…teling me a lot about who looks like who!
Wow it does take awhile to scan those faces
Thanks for all the information you put out for us! You make the learning soooo easy.
Joan Weise
Hi Chris, I had a huge problems with Picasa 2 and had to dump the program. Everytime I tried to get to P-2 my computer went crazy, flashing all sorts of letters and meaningless stuff and I would have to close her up. Finally with much help form Picasa friends, I downloaded again and have P-3, and now I am uptight about trying 3.5. Have you heard of anyone having problems with this new program? Thanks in advance and I really enjoy all you help and tips, I can use the progrem with much more ease.
Sandy
I do NOT want face recognition on Picasa. Please remove now!
Ellis Campfield
This tool feels like an invasion of privacy. I do not like it and should not have been set to work by default. Please remove this feature and everything it does from Picasa. It was such a great program, I only upgraded because once the new version became available, I started having all types of problems with the install.
Follow the instructions in the article above and Face Recognition will be turned off.
Face recognition. As with anything new and different it takes some to translate what the developers thought and how to get into their heads and make it work. OR NOT! Seems FR begins with every at picasa start IF new pictures are recognized or an older folder is added. I’ve ignored them for a while but yesterday I took the time to have a looksee. Doesn’t appear that good. Misses so many. Identifies c5 Corvette tail lights? Sunglasses I presume. And shows images I’ve not recognized afore. Hunting for the source no help as the find on disc OR in picasa points to the same grouping and that face ain’t there! So I’ve turn FR off. Foro now.
Naming all of them? I guess it’s great practice for law enforcement schools. I’m still coming to grips with tags. Looking for improvements to do it quicker. Possibly with a drop down menu of several quick tags groupings. I’m still under my old thinking of off loading the camera to a folder by date which may have several dates and several ’scenes’ Including occasional one time images. Taking the time to tag all at that moment is out of the question with the existing tools. I’ll try to tag the first in a grouping or the individual ones in that grouping so I can find an do the rest later. I suppose there is methodology to ‘do it right’ to begin with when of loading. But then one now has two (or more) of them methodologies to deal with. Me thinks that some brief instructions and appropriate tools may ease the transition for the nubees like me.
Man, I hate this new feature. It could scan for hours and what is the purpose? To show how smart this piece of software is!
Once switch face recognition feature off, I want to clear my ignore faces album. How to do it?
hmmm – not exactly sure. With most albums, you can just click on the album and press Del. I don’t see an ignore faces album on mine. But – I do see an ‘Unnamed People’ album and, while viewing that, I have the choice of ‘Show Ignored Faces’ or ‘Back to Unnamed.’ The ‘ignored faces’ album doesn’t seem to get in the way to me.