Adrian M
Level 1 (70 points)
Photos for Mac

Q: why does photos on ios10 and macOS use different people identities/face recognition?

Before iOS10, I had my photos on my my Mac in Photos, latest version, with all the faces recognised and tagged appropriately. Names would generally be "Firstname Lastname" as it matched people in my address book.

 

At the same time, Photos on my iPhone (iOS9 latest) could find these photos by name even though it had no real concept of face recognition. I guess this is because it got it from the Mac via the cloud.

 

Now with iOS10, all that changed and I spent a good few days face tagging all my photos. I knew macOS was coming so it wouldn't be a wasted effort and all the face tagging would sync back to the the Mac. iOS10 Photos was happy to drop the last name part of names, even though it matched them from address book with first name, last name.

 

Then macOS came out and this didn't happen.

 

macOS Photos still had my old tags from the Mac and wanted to spend a couple of days rescanning for faces.

 

This has now completed and there is absolutely no synchronisation between the iPhone and the Mac for the same photos.

 

Worse, on the Mac, if I try to tag a new photo, it gives me options of 3 or 4 variations of the same person, e.g. "first last (with email)", "first", "first last" - which one do I choose?

 

So is cloud syncing of people not supported now? Do I have to face tag everyone twice? Is there any point in having a Mac and an iPhone now this and many other synchronisations are disappearing? What about Handover/Continuity?

 

Sorry for the long "question" but it's born out of many days of frustration and time wasted on "new and improved" Apple software

MacBook Pro with Retina display, macOS Sierra (10.12)

Posted on Sep 21, 2016 11:51 PM

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Adrian M

Q: why does photos on ios10 and macOS use different people identities/face recognition?

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  • Helpful answers

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Sep 23, 2016 7:26 AM in response to Adrian M
    Level 10 (107,629 points)
    iCloud
    Sep 23, 2016 7:26 AM in response to Adrian M

    Previously, Faces named in Photos on a Mac would partly sync to iCloud, not the frames of the faces thumbnails, but the searchable name tags.

    This changed with iOS 10 and macOS Sierra.

     

    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. Even the searchable faces tags do no longer sync between Macs.

     

    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 cannot test this, because only my iPhone can be updated to iOS 10 and not my iPad.

     

    It sure is a tedious work to have to manage the same people over and over again on several devices. . I had to tag the people on three different Macs - a large iCloud Photo Library with 45000 photos, and did still not get started on the iPhone. It is really annoying that the people names do not sync across iCloud Photo Library devices.

     

    What I did to make it a bit easier: I named the people primarily on one Mac, and when done, I added the name of the person as a keyword. Just open the people album, select all photos of a person, then type the name of the person into the keyword section of the Info panel.

    These keywords sync to iCloud Photo Library and I can search for them on any Mac and my iPhone. And when I want to name detected persons, I can select the person in the People album and open the Info panel and copy and paste the name from the Info panel directly below the person  thumbnail. This will ensure, that I am using the same writing for the name on all devices.

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Sep 23, 2016 7:32 AM in response to Adrian M
    Level 10 (107,629 points)
    iCloud
    Sep 23, 2016 7:32 AM in response to Adrian M

    Worse, on the Mac, if I try to tag a new photo, it gives me options of 3 or 4 variations of the same person, e.g. "first last (with email)", "first", "first last" - which one do I choose?

    There may be several variants of the same name in your Contacts.  The Contacts can now import contacts of persons found in your Mail. 

    Photos has now an annoying new feature:  If a person is found in the Contacts, it will use the name, but only show the first name below the thumbnails, so we can no longer find out the last name of a person by looking at the People album of the person.  I avoid to use the Contact version of a persons name, when naming it in Photos, just to prevent Photos from dropping the last name.  If photos is showing three suggestions for a persons name, I look at the tiny faces thumbnail to the left of the suggestion and try to use always the same suggestion, and not the one from the Contacts card.