Find and name people in imported iCloud photos on iPhone

Is your Photos library optimised?

I gave the following answer to someone else's question a couple of hours ago:

"On the screen where you can see all your photos, keep scrolling down to the bottom where you see the Customise & Reorder button. Well, do you see any text below that button (e.g. library still optimising and a percentage %) ?

If that is so, leave your iPhone plugged in overnight (I think it must be charged up to 100% for library optimisation). Perhaps searching is restored now?"

Once your library is optimised, select a photo and ask for information. Faces will pop up in a small circle at the left bottom of the screen, with a question mark (?). Click on the question mark and fill in the necessary information.

So your library is optimised then. You do know about the small circles with the question mark. Don't they appear when you press the i (information) button underneath the photo? I'm checking my own iPhone Photos library now, and sometimes do come across a photo where no face was recognised (no small circles), or where faces were recognised but not named (small circles with a question mark).

Not sure I'll be able to help, unless I come across something similar like you are experiencing. I'm quite new to this photos on iPhone and iPad activity. Up to now I have always transferred them to Mac and do my job there.

jesperS12 wrote: …However, I have imported other photos on my iCloud not taken with my iPhone, and for these photos it is not possible to find/name

I wonder, where did these pictures come from? And how did you import them? I have pictures I've taken with my Nikon, imported to my Mac, and synchronized through iCloud, and they are named as usual on my phone.

Normally pictures are scanned on import, and that information is filed away for recognition later. They don't get re-scanned. Is it possible you by-passed the usual import scanning? Frankly, I'm pretty suspicious of using a cable to transfer pictures to Photos, but I can't test it, since cables and iCloud are incompatible.

jesperS12 wrote: …taken years ago with a digital Sony camera. I've uploaded them from my Windows PC to my iCloud Photos through a browser (pushed the small upload-button available in the browser based iCloud Photos).

Metadata is often stripped off pictures by PCs and/or browsers, but I don't see why that would affect Faces.

I don't know anything about "iCloud for Windows," available in Microsoft's Store, but it might be worth getting that and seeing if bypassing the browser would work better.