Searching for pictures by object type - Apple Photos Tutorial

- Over the years one of the most common questions I've received about photos for macOS, is why doesn't it have star ratings? Why isn't keywording better? You know, those kinds of questions. And the reason why people ask those questions is because they use those tools to help them find photos in their library, especially as their library grows and grows and grows. Well, part of the answer is that Apple has been working hard on object recognition within the app, under the hood. And so that they don't feel like those other tools are necessary. Now, whether that's right or wrong, I'm not here to judge. But I'm going to show you how the Apple approach plays out in a very large library. This is not our exercise files library, for those of you that get exercise files. This is my personal library because I needed something with a whole lot of pictures in it to show you how object recognition works in photos for macOS Monterrey. How does it work? Well, you just go up to the search field and you enter a category name. Now, this can be anything that comes to your mind. Like, for instance, if I'm looking for pictures of my cat here at the studio named Dibs, then what I'm going to do is enter cat, the object cat. And you'll see it right there. So we have cat, we also have cathedral building, cat-like animal, caterpillar, adult cat. So you even get subcategories for your search. We're just going to go with straight cat here. And sure enough, since Dibs is one of my most photographed pets, she's right here at the top, right? And we see all these great shots of hers. And you notice how fast it happens. It just comes up, boom, just like that. Cat, here she is. All righty. So that is object recognition. You just have to sort of think like a computer. Let's try another one. Let's say that I'm looking for a specific camera that I have. Well, I'm just going to search on camera to begin with. Now you see we have camera, then we have camera settings, wide angle camera, camera remote. I'm just going to go with camera. And then there are sub categories for this. So I have two locations to choose from, Santa Rosa and Wikiup and Oakland arena. So actually I have three locations to choose from, and then winter and spring. So then you go, okay, I've narrowed the field down. This is my extensive photos library. This is my personal library, has thousands and thousands of images in it. And I'm just going to winnow it down to what, let's say 552 or so images. And then you can quickly find what you're looking for. Let me just show you this one shot here. I just noticed this. This is hilarious. This is a scan from way, way, way back when. I've got the bad holiday sweater. I've got a film Hasselblad here. So photos recognizes this as a camera, which I think is pretty good. We've got some sort of UFO like object coming in here. It says October, 2018, but I guarantee you is way before that. That was probably when it was scanned. That is definitely the way back machine. This is more what I look like these days. Yeah, yeah. I know. Wouldn't it be nice to go back? Anyway. (narrator laughs) So these are cameras, right? Okay. Let's do one more. One more. Barn. I love taking pictures of barns. Lets see how we do here. So again, if you're looking for a specific barn, enter the generic object name and then winnow it down. Barnes Road, which has barn in it, right. Barns, and then we've got a few specific locations here. But you can see the results are pretty good. Here we go with a bunch of barn shots, and every now and then you get a few false positives in there, but that's okay. The bulk of the results are going to be quite good. And this is the way to navigate thousands and thousands of pictures to help you find the one or two shots that you're looking for. Start out by thinking in terms of object and then get that, you know, select a group showing on your screen. And then chances are very good you'll find what you're looking for quickly from there.