Can Lightroom face recognition data be reused on another PC?
Asked 11/9/2019
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2 answers
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I’ve built up a large set of named faces in one Lightroom catalog using automatic face recognition. Can that face/name data be exported or transferred to another Lightroom installation so another user can benefit from it without importing all of my photos?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
6y ago
2 Answers
1
The face recognition is stored somewhere in the LR catalog, which is just regular SQLite database.
Here is a related question on editing the LR catalog database.
In theory you could, backup the original catalog, find the right table(s) in the catalog database, isolate the relevant rows and copy them over to the new database.
However, there's no database documentation and the tables refer to each other through various columns. All these references should match, otherwise the catalog is seen as corrupt.
If you manage to do this successfully, please share the method and documentation here :)
Originally by user9161. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user9161
6y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Lightroom’s face recognition data is stored inside the catalog, not as a simple exportable face library. In principle, because the catalog is an SQLite database, you might be able to copy the relevant records from one catalog to another. However, this is not a supported workflow and is very risky: Lightroom’s catalog structure isn’t publicly documented, and its tables are linked by internal references that must stay consistent or the catalog can become corrupt.
So the practical answer is: there’s no official or easy way to export and reuse just the face-recognition library on another PC. Any direct database editing would require careful reverse-engineering and full backups, and even then may fail.
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