Clarification needed: facetags preserved or not?

[mark-vdw]

I've been searching the forums and the web for a clear answer to this but am finding contradictory results. When going from El Cap to Sierra, are existing facetags (1) completely lost, (2) preserved but separate from the People functionality, (3) merged into People?

I'm not so worried about the shots where faces are clearly recognisable, I'm sure the new algorithm will do fine with those, but I spent hundreds of hours tagging 30k photos, including people with their backs to the cam, etc. Would hate to loose all of that.

 

[mopatops]

Yep, number 3. I was in a similar situation to you and have had no problems with it retaining everyone that I tagged manually

 

[RabidMacFan]

My Sierra install is still "processing" photos in the People area, a function that appears to be very graphics card intensive. However, names and faces that I had previously labeled in El Capitan appear to still be here so far. For you, I would make sure to create a backup of your photo library just in case.

I'm curious if they will sync between macOS and iOS now.