Confused about Photos: Face tags vs. People, iCloud sync, optimized storage, iOS vs. macOS?

[mark-vdw]

Hi all,

The Photos announcements left me a bit confused. I'm hoping someone with access to the beta can clear some things up for me:

- Is the "People" tab significantly different from the "Faces" we previously had? Is the process of tagging people any different than before (other than better auto-detection), and do existing tags carry over?

- How does this device-level computer vision combine with the iCloud photo library? Does each device perform its object recognition independently or are the recognized features stored in the photo metadata and synced back down to other devices? My wife & I have 2 Macs, 2 iPads and 2 iPhones linked to our iCloud photo library, i hope that they're not all recognizing faces & features independently from each other.

- I also wonder what happens with photos that are not stored locally on any device anymore but only available in the cloud - do they get temporarily downloaded, examined, tagged, and sent back up? Or are they simply not searchable anymore? With 20.000 photos in the library and less then 1.000 on most devices, having this be purely device level could be a big issue.

- Finally, is this object recognition only happening on iOS or can I let the Macs handle most of the work? The thought of my poor iPhone grunting through the entire library is not very appealing, would much rather let the workhorse handle that. On the other hand, it would be most welcome if I could start doing some face tagging on the iPad, so far we had to use the laptop for that and the face tags wouldn't even sync to the other Mac.

Thanks for any clarification!

 

[Paco II]

From this article (https://www.macrumors.com/2016/06/15/see-ios-10s-new-photos-app-in-action/): "When using the new Photos features, each device with a photo library will need to scan images independently -- there is no iCloud link yet."

 

[Creek0512]

From Apple's iOS 10 beta 1 Release Notes:

• People syncing is not enabled via iCloud Photo Library in iOS 10 beta 1

 

[stooovie]

Their insistence on doing everything locally on the device will inevitably create many problems. I get that privacy is important, but I can't imagine the nightmare of scanning my 35k+ photo library on the phone and syncing all the new metadata with other devices.

 

[Creek0512]

How is it more difficult than syncing all of your actual photos?

 

[boston04and07]

As we get closer to the GM I've been wondering about this a lot, and ended up finding this thread. For those of you running the beta - how are you liking the People feature so far? I've spent countless hours over the years tagging faces in all of my photos, and everyone says that those tags will carry over, but I just want to be 100% sure...after all that work I'd really hate to lose them.

Also, on iOS, I know that the Photos app will automatically go through and tag people itself, but if I want to manually add or change a Faces/People tag, is there a way to do that? Or will I need a Mac for that? Sorry if these questions are repetitive, but I just wanted to ask to make sure nothing has changed and that I wasn't getting potentially outdated info from older threads or anything.

 

[Creek0512]

Yes you can can do it manually in iOS.

 

[boston04and07]

Yes you can can do it manually in iOS.

Good to know. Thank you!

 

[Otaviano]

Hi all,

The Photos announcements left me a bit confused. I'm hoping someone with access to the beta can clear some things up for me:

- Is the "People" tab significantly different from the "Faces" we previously had? Is the process of tagging people any different than before (other than better auto-detection), and do existing tags carry over?

- How does this device-level computer vision combine with the iCloud photo library? Does each device perform its object recognition independently or are the recognized features stored in the photo metadata and synced back down to other devices? My wife & I have 2 Macs, 2 iPads and 2 iPhones linked to our iCloud photo library, i hope that they're not all recognizing faces & features independently from each other.

- I also wonder what happens with photos that are not stored locally on any device anymore but only available in the cloud - do they get temporarily downloaded, examined, tagged, and sent back up? Or are they simply not searchable anymore? With 20.000 photos in the library and less then 1.000 on most devices, having this be purely device level could be a big issue.

- Finally, is this object recognition only happening on iOS or can I let the Macs handle most of the work? The thought of my poor iPhone grunting through the entire library is not very appealing, would much rather let the workhorse handle that. On the other hand, it would be most welcome if I could start doing some face tagging on the iPad, so far we had to use the laptop for that and the face tags wouldn't even sync to the other Mac.

Thanks for any clarification!

I played around with this a lot on the early betas. Here is what I know:

- Peopel and Faces are essentially the same thing. I believe your previous tags will carry over.

- Unfortunately they are all separate. Why they do not sync with one another is beyond me. A gross oversight on Apple's part. My recommendation would be to do all your tagging from one device. I assume next year they will fix this.

- The system will eventually go through your entire library. Not sure how it examines pictures that are only in the cloud.

- You really do not notice the phone crunching through your photos. It does it mostly overnight while charging.

 

[boston04and07]

- Unfortunately they are all separate. Why they do not sync with one another is beyond me. A gross oversight on Apple's part. My recommendation would be to do all your tagging from one device. I assume next year they will fix this.

Question...so if People albums are all separate on different devices, if I tag people in a photo on my iPhone, does this tagging work not sync over to my iPad and Mac? If so that seriously seems like a step back...as it is now, Faces tags added on my Mac don't display on my iOS devices, but when I search for tagged people's names on iOS, the photos I tagged with their faces do come back in the search results, so in a way it does sync over currently. Sorry if I'm muddling things - I just can't wrap my head around how this change works and it could affect a lot of work I've done already

 

[ZEEN0j]

Non of my tagged photos from my mac carried over. I had maybe 20 people tagged. Now I have 5 cause I had to name the faces again on my iPad and my iPhone. Completely separate per device. The scanning and adding faces and merging is a lot easier now though. It even scans thumbnails on videos so you can tag them as well. So no, as of right now at least for me on two separate devices I had to start over.

 

[boston04and07]

Non of my tagged photos from my mac carried over. I had maybe 20 people tagged. Now I have 5 cause I had to name the faces again on my iPad and my iPhone. Completely separate per device. The scanning and adding faces and merging is a lot easier now though. It even scans thumbnails on videos so you can tag them as well. So no, as of right now at least for me on two separate devices I had to start over.

So wait...I have over 20,000 photos on my Mac (!) that I've gone through over the years tagging faces. I have absolutely no idea how many I have tagged at this point but it's way up there...are you saying that all that won't sync at all anymore? Omg. I might weep.

 

[ZEEN0j]

So wait...I have over 20,000 photos on my Mac (!) that I've gone through over the years tagging faces. I have absolutely no idea how many I have tagged at this point but it's way up there...are you saying that all that won't sync at all anymore? Omg. I might weep.

I don't know. The people that are saying it will are not entirely sure. All I know is it didn't for me on two different devices. My mac is still running El Capitan and all my faces are still there. My guess is when I update my mac the old faces system will be replaced with the new one. Only thing that's being synced right now are moments.

 

[Otaviano]

So wait...I have over 20,000 photos on my Mac (!) that I've gone through over the years tagging faces. I have absolutely no idea how many I have tagged at this point but it's way up there...are you saying that all that won't sync at all anymore? Omg. I might weep.

Yeah they do not carry over at the moment. This was also confirmed by Craig Federighi when he appeared on the Talk Show at WWDC.

I expect this to be addressed sooner than later because it seems like a gross oversight. Also with Faces there is the possibility where you start building conflicting libraries of information.

I would recommend that you continue to maintain your Faces on just one device for the time being.