How does Faces work in the new macOS Sierra photos update

[QuiteGrumpy]

As photos now has new facial and object recognition abilities, I'm wondering what the app will do with the thousands of photos I've tagged with faces already? Does it make tagging faces easier? Does it continue to use the same tags? Is there still a faces album? Does that data now transfer across to iOS?

Be really interested to know, thanks.

 

[Feenician]

Understand that the answers below are what I observe and what happens so far. They may not match the final release or even later betas

I'm wondering what the app will do with the thousands of photos I've tagged with faces already?

They are retained

Does it make tagging faces easier?

I think so, yes. It's really fast and easy to take multi matched faces and name or merge them to an existing name/face.

Does it continue to use the same tags?

I don't use tags extensively

Is there still a faces album?

It's "People" on the sidebar, but yes

Does that data now transfer across to iOS?

Apparently not. My faces were retained from the older version of photos on upgrade on iOS but apparently new work is not yet synced but they plan to add it.

 

[QuiteGrumpy]

Thank you for answering all my questions, that all sounds great. Brilliant that you can merge the work that the photos app does with your own work tagging 'faces.' It'll be great when that all works with iOS too. 'People' is a much nicer album title than faces! I'm really looking forward to this photos update.

 

[navaira]

Faces do not sync between computers when using iCloud (they sort of do – if I type a name in search bar, they will be found – but the circles do not sync for a reason that is known only to Eddy Cue or whoever is in charge of iCloud) – has anybody had a chance to see if this is fixed in People feature?

 

[Feenician]

Faces do not sync between computers when using iCloud (they sort of do – if I type a name in search bar, they will be found – but the circles do not sync for a reason that is known only to Eddy Cue or whoever is in charge of iCloud) – has anybody had a chance to see if this is fixed in People feature?

It's not. It will be added in a future beta, according to Craig Federighi

 

[navaira]

ARGH. I hope Federighi does not mean "future" as in "somewhere this century, after we update Mac Pro"! Thanks for the answer though.

 

[Feenician]

ARGH. I hope Federighi does not mean "future" as in "somewhere this century, after we update Mac Pro"! Thanks for the answer though.

I expect it will be along somewhere in the beta cycle. I agree it's a pain in the meantime as I want clean up my collection but I'll be damned if I'm doing that 3 times, especially while not knowing which device will end up the master (or, worse, if there will be conflicts). Don't run betas if you don't want half-implemented features is the moral of the story I guess

 

[navaira]

I'm running El Cap, having manflu, started tagging Faces on the Macbook, moved over to the Big Mac and surprise... I'm doing it again... so it's not a question of betas, I just hope they fix it.

The weird thing is that if I go back to the Macbook and search for the name, it shows as "John Smith – Face". It only doesn't show among the "bubbles". This doesn't sound like something incredibly difficult to fix...

 

[Feenician]

I'm running El Cap, having manflu, started tagging Faces on the Macbook, moved over to the Big Mac and surprise... I'm doing it again... so it's not a question of betas, I just hope they fix it.

The weird thing is that if I go back to the Macbook and search for the name, it shows as "John Smith – Face". It only doesn't show among the "bubbles". This doesn't sound like something incredibly difficult to fix...

I only have one mac so I can't confirm that but it always synced well between iOS and OS X photos for me. Interesting find on the searching thing though

 

[boston04and07]

I'm running El Cap, having manflu, started tagging Faces on the Macbook, moved over to the Big Mac and surprise... I'm doing it again... so it's not a question of betas, I just hope they fix it.

The weird thing is that if I go back to the Macbook and search for the name, it shows as "John Smith – Face". It only doesn't show among the "bubbles". This doesn't sound like something incredibly difficult to fix...

I have the exact same issue. About a month ago or so I ended up having to reinstall OS X El Cap on my MacBook Pro and found out that my Time Machine backup was corrupted (fun, fun)...I didn't mind so much as everything that's important to me is backed up to the cloud at this point, including Photos. Well, I had no idea about Faces albums not being stored in the cloud, so I was quite panicky when I went to tag some faces this morning and found that my Faces album was completely empty. When I searched for peoples' names in the search bar, the results were still there (i.e. searching for "John Smith" displayed the correct number of faces already tagged for him), even though there was no John Smith "face" in the Faces album. So, I was glad that the data was still there, at least, even if it wasn't being displayed in the normal way.

So now I have a bunch of new photos to tag, and guess I'll just tag them as new Faces with the same name as previous Faces. I guess that means that I'll potentially have to merge duplicate Faces with the same name when Sierra comes along, from what I've read here, but I guess I'd rather do that than lose all my tags altogether. I'm glad to read that Faces (or I guess, now, People) still allows you to manually tag people. I'm a bit obsessive and have a rule about tagging everyone in a photo, even people who might be partially obscured or unclear.

@navaira, what I would probably do if I were you, (if you're planning on upgrading to Sierra in the fall), is just do all the tagging on one Mac for now, since it seems like this work will eventually sync to your other devices once Sierra is ready. That way you wouldn't end up having to do the same work twice if it does work, and if it doesn't sync the way it should, at least you'll know for sure before doing all the work.

 

[navaira]

That's what I've done exactly, and I do hope Sierra fixes it, or even better - final El Capitan 10.11.6 does.

 

[DoctorDoctor]

It's not. It will be added in a future beta, according to Craig Federighi

When did he say that. I have read over and over again that photo information will not sync across devices and that each device will be responsible for finding people and objects. Also read that Memories will not sync. I sure do hope that is not the case or nobody will use Photos.

 

[Feenician]

When did he say that. I have read over and over again that photo information will not sync across devices and that each device will be responsible for finding people and objects. Also read that Memories will not sync. I sure do hope that is not the case or nobody will use Photos.

In an interview with JohnGgruber after the wwdc keynote.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

When did he say that. I have read over and over again that photo information will not sync across devices and that each device will be responsible for finding people and objects. Also read that Memories will not sync. I sure do hope that is not the case or nobody will use Photos.

http://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2016/06/17/ep-158 - start about 45 min in, there's some discussion of it.

Which, BTW, segues into a FASCINATING discussion of Differential Privacy.

 

[DoctorDoctor]

Thanks Feenician and FreakinEurekan. I will go check that out.