Users of the photo platform Google Photos can benefit from many powerful functions, some of which are in the field of image recognition. Face recognition is particularly noteworthy because it always delivers amazing results and recognizes some people that even humans would have difficulties with. We’ll show you how you can get even more out of it and use the feature smarter.
For several years now, every Google Photos user has been able to use facial recognition, which is deeply integrated into the platform. In the first few years, this had to be activated once in some countries, including Germany, using various VPN tricks, which means that many loyal users of the platform may not even be aware of this feature or at least not be familiar with it. Or if it is known, perhaps you have not considered the possibilities offered by this recognition of people in images.
Face recognition in Google Photos works fully automatically in the background and searches every uploaded image for faces that can be assigned to individual people. This may not please all privacy advocates, but Google Photos simply recognizes facial features and then offers a grouping, without any personal information or automatic suggestions for individuals. So it’s sort of like anonymous face recognition. If you want, you can disable this in the settings. But it doesn’t have to stay that way, at least in the private sphere.
The grouping by faces is very practical because it also gives an overview of all the people shown in the photos. You can find the overview on this page, which by default only contains the faces and they are in descending order. There, each person can be selected with one click and all associated images and videos can be displayed.
All faces in this list are sorted by relevance, with relevance being primarily based on how often they appear in the photos in your cloud database. So close people, of whom you probably have the most pictures, are at the top of the list and can easily be selected. Nevertheless, it might be nice if you assigned a name to each face to find them faster and to improve the overview.
This is how you assign a name to
a person Once you have found a person in this list that you want to name, you are only two steps away from this function. Above the list of all photos you will find a small, automatically created profile picture of this person at the top left. Click on this once and you can enter any name for the person shown, which will then automatically be assigned to this profile and all other photos.
There are no suggestions at this point and the given designation is only used internally in your own account. Of course, Google saves the combination of name and photo in its own database, but no other user sees this assignment. A global assignment is not offered and would probably also be the quick end of this practical function. So you can now continue and simply name all the people who are important to you with their name or the desired call designation – so also “Mama”, “Papa” or one or the other embarrassing nickname of a friend. Nobody will see it but you.
Of course, the list does not have to be worked through completely, because after a certain time you will notice that you do not even know many of the people in the photos. This is because Google Photos really recognizes every single face and offers it in the listing. People in the background, people on billboards, on TV, or in other places in your pictures also appear there. In most cases, however, only once, the list of unknown persons can potentially become very long and is constantly growing.
Use the names in the search function
If you have given names to the most important faces, you can also use them in the search function. You can then enter “Mama” in the search function, for example, and only photos of one of the most important people in your life will appear – if you have assigned it correctly. This can be combined with other names or search terms. So if you’re looking for your parents, simply enter “mom and dad” and only photos will appear where the two people can be seen together. Provided, of course, that you also named the parents that way. If they have their full name, you just have to enter “Marianne and Michael” 😉
Just check out our in-depth article on the Google Photos search feature and now use people’s names as additional parameters. Personal names can easily be combined with place names, times or objects. It should of course be noted that Google Photos can have a problem with the same names. On the off chance that you have a friend named “Paris,” photos of that person or of your recent France city trip might appear at the same time. This can only be prevented by an alternative name for the person – the Alexas of this world can surely sing a little about that.
Incidentally, face recognition also assigns people a gender, which could quickly become controversial at the moment, but still works very well. Just search for “man”, woman”, child”, “girl”, “boy” or even “teenager” and you should get the corresponding pictures. By the way, gender cannot be changed and is recognized automatically. However, not as reliable as the pattern recognition for the face. If a male reader finds himself under “woman”, you are not the only ones this happens to.