How do I go about Naming Faces in Google Photos?
In my previous post (Google Photos – Face Recognition, Face Grouping), I initially expressed that it did not seem as if Google Photos offered us here in Australia the ability to manually select and label a face in a photo. That is partially true but don’t you worry … there is hope!
If you have populated your Google Photos but no faces have yet been recognised or grouped, then please have a read of Google Photos – Face Recognition, Face Grouping. The solutions there might avail you.
Google Photos tends to recognise more and more faces as it gets a larger sample (more photos). And as it does, you will see that your Albums >> People & Pets folder start to fill up.
Note: this image is a screen shot of my online Google Photos but it should be very similar when viewed in your app on your devices as well.
But How Do I Go About Naming Those Faces?
While you cannot just pick a face from a photo and label a face, Google Photos will recognise more and more faces. It just doesn’t know their names (yet). Once Google Photos recognises a face, you can then label that face. And there are 3 main routes you can take to go about this.
Google Photos has 4 main sections:
Photos || Albums || Assistant || Sharing
Naming Faces via Photos section
Go to the Google Photos‘ Photos section (which has all your photos).
Click to see the full photo. You want to see the Info of each photo.
To turn on the Info, hover over the photo or touch the screen (whichever is appropriate) and you will see options at the top right of the screen. Click the Info icon.
You will then see an Info panel on the right of your screen. Within the Info panel, under People, you will see the face(s) that Google Photos recognises as a face from the current photo.
Now you can help Google Photos better recognise faces you have already labelled or name faces it recognises but you have not yet assigned a label to.
If it is a face that you have already labelled, the name you assigned to that face will be under the face thumbnail in the Info panel. If you have not identified a face, there will be no name beneath the thumbnailed face.
Note: Google Photos might not pick up all the faces in a particular photo. Probably because you do not have enough photos of those people yet. In the Info panel, Google Photos will display thumbnail photos of all the faces it can pick up.
If it is a face that you have already labelled, and you click on the thumbnail, Google Photos will take you through a process where it shows you face after face in different photos that it thinks might be the same person. You can either confirm or deny it is the same person. That way, Google Photos is better able to recognise that named person from hereon in.
If it is a face that has not been labelled, when you click on the thumbnail(s), you will get a chance to:
- name the face and
- verify more faces of the same person
Naming Faces via Albums >> People & Pets
In the People & Pets folder, Google Photos will populate that with faces, some named and some not.
With the named faces, when you click on it, Google Photos will ask you to verify if other faces it shows you is of the same person (just as we talked about above).
With faces that you have not named, when you click on it, it will give you a chance to name that face and if available, Google Photos will ask you to verify if the additional photos it shows you is of the same person (just as we talked about above).
Naming Faces via Albums you have created
If you have already created some Albums (whether shared or not), you can also do exactly as above by going to those albums you created and going through each of the photos.
