Handling Photos' AI and manual keywords

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Level 1

9 points

Handling Photos' AI and manual keywords

Dear all, I just updated to Sierra and got the new Photos application which, as one says, is enough (artificially) intelligent to assign keywords to my pics.

I have been manually assigning keywords to good old iPhoto for years, which is, doing it thoroughly, a quite time-consuming process. Therefore, if the AI function is any good, I would just love to use it.

Do some of you have experience (or even just slight insights) into the following questions:

1. Can I manage those automatically added keywords the same way as "normal" ones? And if this would be the case: where?

2. Is it possible to map manually assigned keywords to automatic ones? (Say, liking to get rid of duplicates, replacing manual by auto keywords)?

Looking forward to sharing experiences with you!

Best regards & hiube hinech, Thomas

macOS Sierra (10.12)

Posted on Apr 8, 2017 12:05 PM

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Answer 1

Old Toad

Level 10

215,244 points

Apr 8, 2017 1:02 PM in response to CH_Thomas

This article lists the 4584 categories that Photos can assign to images: Apple’s updated Photos app recognizes thousands of objects, scenes and facial expressions

I tried a search for "bowl" and instead of getting images of bowls I got 3 photos of my son's family bowling. Go figure.

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

200,519 points

Apr 8, 2017 12:23 PM in response to CH_Thomas

Hi, Thomas.

Photos's artificial intelligence will classify the photos and assign categories. We can search for the categories using the search field, but not use them in smart albums. The categories do not replace the keywords.

I use the categories to search for things where would not assign keywords permanently. And to help searching for´r photos, where I want keywords assigned and then assign the keyword.

Léonie

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

200,519 points

Apr 8, 2017 1:16 PM in response to CH_Thomas

The automatic classification according to categories is impressive, but not perfect.

When I am searching for the category "dogs" it will include a few cats, and searching for "Sunset" pictures will include a few sun rises. It looks like the artificial intelligence does not handle the timezones well. So be prepared to check the automatically assigned categories and assign your own keywords, if necessary.

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Answer 4

léonie

Level 10

200,519 points

Apr 8, 2017 1:53 PM in response to Old Toad

🙂 That is one of the places I have never been to!A good idea!

The pictures are from the Black Forest, Cook Islands (Rarotonga), Chile, Hawaii, Kenya, South Africa, Alaska (Iditarod Trail), Mexico, Greenland.

Photos did not find all pictures with dogs, but tried to compensate. Photos missed all pictures of puppies, for example.

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Answer 5

CH_Thomas Author

Level 1

9 points

Apr 9, 2017 12:31 AM in response to léonie

Hello Léonie & Old Toad

Thanks a lot for your insights. I was aware of, say, some imperfections of this auto recognition feature. Thank you too for the "category" notion, did not know that. But I come back to one of my questions, maybe you could help here too: If Photos keep assigning "mushroom" to cars - or "cats" to dogs, puppies, toads, whatever - is there a kind of "learning" function, as it used to be the case with facial recognition in iPhoto ("no, this is not Kermit, but Waldorf")? Which came back to manually edit those auto categories.

Best regards, Thomas

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Answer 6

léonie

Level 10

200,519 points

Apr 9, 2017 12:54 PM in response to CH_Thomas

("no, this is not Kermit, but Waldorf")? Which came back to manually edit those auto categories.I

have not seen any Apple documentation describing any controls to improve the classification for the categories. You would have to send misclassified photos to Apple, using the feedback form or the bug reporter, so the developers can include your sample photos into the training sets.

But the classification algorithm seems to take the keywords and titles we assign into account. when I ue the word "elephant" in the title of a photo or as a keyword, it will not appear in the Rhino category (but I am still seeing a Gnu classified as a rhino, even with "Gnus" in the title.)

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