léonie

Q: Photos on macOS Sierra: Peoples Album does not sync with iCloud Photo Library

The Photos Help has just been updated for Sierra, and we finally have it in writing: 

 

https://help.apple.com/photos/mac/1.2/?lang=en#/phtf5e48489c

 

Note: People identified in the People album are not synced across devices.

And as far as I can tell, it really does not sync between my Photos Libraries on the MacBook Pros and my iMac.

 

This is different in the iOS 10 user guide for the iPhone and iPad:

http://help.apple.com/iphone/10/#/iph9c7ee918c

 

People are synced among devices where you’re signed in with the same Apple ID.

 

 

I wonder, how this is supposed to work, if a Macs and iPhone are synced with iCloud User Library.

None of the faces I named on my iPhone did sync to my Mac.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015), macOS Sierra (10.12), 2,8 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB, 1TB

Posted on Sep 21, 2016 10:31 AM

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Q: Photos on macOS Sierra: Peoples Album does not sync with iCloud Photo Library

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  • by loïcfernandezcastrillon,

    loïcfernandezcastrillon loïcfernandezcastrillon Sep 28, 2016 5:36 AM in response to léonie
    Level 1 (112 points)
    iPhone
    Sep 28, 2016 5:36 AM in response to léonie

    You can sync People across multiple devices, this is what I do for over a year now...

    Faces album does not sync for privacy reasons etc, I don't know why since Apple has all your photos in iCloud.

     

    So, to do the sync, you need a Mac, on a photo by pressing (cmd+i) you can edit tags, so you can create a tag for each person you want to name. For instance "Tim Cook" LOL. Then if you see Tim Cook on a bunch of photos you can select all of them and add the tag once, it will apply to all the selected photos. And if a bunch of friends are one an image you can add a tag for each of them. The tags will sync to all your devices. On your iPhone if you type Tim Cook in the search it will display all the photos tagged with it's name. If you ask Siri to show all your photos of Tim Cook it will work as well.

     

    It's a little bit annoying to do all the photos, but Faces on Photos isn't 100% accurate as well, wrong names, forget people, etc. So you have to check all your images if you want accurate naming.

     

    Doing it once, you're sure everyone is tagged. You don't have to verify like you have to do with Faces recognition. You can also tag things like "Birthday" "Christmas" and so on. But since photos recognize the scenes, I only use tags for People.

     

    I don't know if tags can be edited on iOS, before it was only editable on Mac.

     

    Regards,

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Sep 28, 2016 5:52 AM in response to loïcfernandezcastrillon
    Level 10 (107,891 points)
    iCloud
    Sep 28, 2016 5:52 AM in response to loïcfernandezcastrillon

    That is what I am doing as well - add a keyword for each named person.  On El Capitan photos created searchable tags automatically and they did even sync to the iPhone and iPad.  Now we have to do that manually.

    But it is not as versatile as the peoples albums.  If we have a photo of a group of ten persons, the keywords will we sorted alphabetically and not in the sequence left to right of all faces. We have to describe manually who is who in the photo.

  • by loïcfernandezcastrillon,

    loïcfernandezcastrillon loïcfernandezcastrillon Sep 28, 2016 6:10 AM in response to léonie
    Level 1 (112 points)
    iPhone
    Sep 28, 2016 6:10 AM in response to léonie

    Yes it's not as "cool" as Faces Albums, but if we want the sync, then it's the only possibility so far!

    I hope one day Apple will sync faces. I think it will be the case, in iBooks if your read the book about "using iPhone with iOS10" from Apple, they say in the Photos section "Faces will sync across your devices signed with the same Apple ID".

     

    So in a near future, who knows... haha

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Sep 28, 2016 6:20 AM in response to loïcfernandezcastrillon
    Level 10 (107,891 points)
    iCloud
    Sep 28, 2016 6:20 AM in response to loïcfernandezcastrillon
    "Faces will sync across your devices signed with the same Apple ID".

     

    Let's hope so!    tThe iPhone user guide for iOS 10 is making that promise; it should already work between iOS 10 devices, only it does not yet.  Note, it says "People are synced", not "will", so they should already be syncing.  http://help.apple.com/iphone/10/#/iph9c7ee918c

     

    People are synced among devices where you’re signed in with the same Apple ID.

     

    But that is for iOS devices, not Macs. The Photos Help does not say anything about syncing.

  • by BlackenAmbaa,

    BlackenAmbaa BlackenAmbaa Sep 29, 2016 11:34 AM in response to bertonzo
    Level 1 (13 points)
    Apple Watch
    Sep 29, 2016 11:34 AM in response to bertonzo

    Just adding to the chorus of disapproval for this. Managing people across different devices is a waste of my time and I think this is privacy concerns compromising functionality far too much. At the very least you should be able to opt in.

     

    I spent a long time managing faces in the previous Photos version - thankfully this did carry across on macOS upgrade. However it still does not migrate across to my iOS10 devices. Similarly a couple of changes I made as a trial independently on my iPad did not sync to my phone either.

  • by GuillaumeB,

    GuillaumeB GuillaumeB Sep 30, 2016 6:22 AM in response to Trevix
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 30, 2016 6:22 AM in response to Trevix

    I agree, I was identifying people and adding more photos of them on my iPad and already told myself that it was a funny time killing thing to do to optimize my photos. I was disappointed not to see any people album on my iMac or on iCloud Photo Web.

     

    Now i'm wondering whether this is a legal problem. Over here in Europe, Facebook had to disable facial analysis. Maybe this feature could be subjected to the same regulations and Apple might be trying to find its way around it, Cause they'd be sync'in highly sensitive data onto their servers.

     

    Hopefully they'll at least bring up an export/import feature... but that's not very Appleish is it ?

  • by LarryHN,

    LarryHN LarryHN Sep 30, 2016 6:25 AM in response to BlackenAmbaa
    Level 10 (85,054 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Sep 30, 2016 6:25 AM in response to BlackenAmbaa

    then you need to tell apple - http://www.apple.com/feedback/

     

    Telling other users here is a waste of everyone's time as on one here can do anything aobut it

     

    LN

  • by loïcfernandezcastrillon,

    loïcfernandezcastrillon loïcfernandezcastrillon Sep 30, 2016 6:40 AM in response to LarryHN
    Level 1 (112 points)
    iPhone
    Sep 30, 2016 6:40 AM in response to LarryHN

    Use tags instead of Faces, it syncs across all your devices.

    Or if you want something like Faces, make albums named according to the person it syncs too!

     

    Plus Faces isn't that cool sometimes it forget people or indicate a bottle of wine as my uncle LOL

     

    You can do albums on all your devices!

    Tags only on the Mac, but doing it once a month takes 5min and you're good

     

    I prefer tags because you can merge them during a search, with albums you have to go to a specific one...

     

    Regards,

  • by GuillaumeB,

    GuillaumeB GuillaumeB Sep 30, 2016 6:53 AM in response to loïcfernandezcastrillon
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 30, 2016 6:53 AM in response to loïcfernandezcastrillon

    I don't see any tag field when doing a CMD+i. is this a simple keyword in the description field ?

     

    Yup I did just send some feedbacks

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Sep 30, 2016 6:57 AM in response to GuillaumeB
    Level 10 (107,891 points)
    iCloud
    Sep 30, 2016 6:57 AM in response to GuillaumeB
    I don't see any tag field when doing a CMD+i. is this a simple keyword in the description field ?

    Keywords, descriptions, and titles sync between all devices.  When I assign a name to a person, I add a keyword as well.

    You cannot see the keywords, descriptions, titles, but if you search for them in Photos on an iPhone or iPad, they will be found.

  • by loïcfernandezcastrillon,

    loïcfernandezcastrillon loïcfernandezcastrillon Sep 30, 2016 7:01 AM in response to GuillaumeB
    Level 1 (112 points)
    iPhone
    Sep 30, 2016 7:01 AM in response to GuillaumeB

    Yes in Keywords, you can add someone as a keyword, for example "John Spencer", when you see this person in other photos, select all of them and in keywords type "jo" it should recognize and show you "John Spencer" type enter to apply the keyword.

     

    Now wait about 2min or so and check on your iPhone, in the search type "John" it will show you. You can ask Siri as well. "Show me my photos of John."

  • by GuillaumeB,

    GuillaumeB GuillaumeB Sep 30, 2016 7:13 AM in response to loïcfernandezcastrillon
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 30, 2016 7:13 AM in response to loïcfernandezcastrillon

    I see. Instead of going photo by photo,  I was trying to add a keyword directly on an already made People album by selecting all images in it and pressing cmd+i. This field does not appear but there is a "description" field which anyway is crawled by the search engine

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Sep 30, 2016 7:23 AM in response to GuillaumeB
    Level 10 (107,891 points)
    iCloud
    Sep 30, 2016 7:23 AM in response to GuillaumeB
    I was trying to add a keyword directly on an already made People album by selecting all images in it and pressing cmd+i. This field does not appear but there is a "description" field which anyway is crawled by the search engine

    I am seeing the keyword field in the Info panel, when I select all images in a People album. It does not say "add keywords", if the photos have already keywords assigned. Then you will see the keywords instead. The keywords are between the description field and the location map.

    Screen Shot 2016-09-30 at 16.19.42.png

  • by GuillaumeB,

    GuillaumeB GuillaumeB Sep 30, 2016 8:15 AM in response to léonie
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 30, 2016 8:15 AM in response to léonie

    Oh ok I saw album names and thought it was another field. Thanks

  • by BlackenAmbaa,

    BlackenAmbaa BlackenAmbaa Sep 30, 2016 9:36 AM in response to LarryHN
    Level 1 (13 points)
    Apple Watch
    Sep 30, 2016 9:36 AM in response to LarryHN

    Already have.

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