Google Photos enables manual face tagging: How to use it
What's the story
After offering a bunch of AI-powered quirks (sometimes even unnecessary ones) into its Photos app, Google is finally adding something we all have wanted for so long - manual face tagging. The feature, which is now open for Photos for Android, will let you manually tell/tag who is present in an image alongside you or someone you know. Here's how to use it.
Current situation
Automatic face tagging in Photos
Google Photos has long been supporting face tagging, but with the help of bots. The app automatically recognizes people's faces from your photos, groups them into one, where you name the person in question. Then, that person is automatically recognized by the app and tagged as and when any new photos are taken and uploaded with them.
Manual tagging
Manual tagging option now opened
While Google's recognition system has made managing images and people in them easier, there can be instances where it might miss a person for sorting. To tackle this and help a user add the missed faces, Google is offering the manual tagging option. It simply lets you pick a face in an image and add that person's name manually, therefore identifying them for Google.
Important
Face recognition needed for manual tagging
The new feature is handy - and works pretty easily - but it is important to note that you'd be able to add a person's name to a photo only if the app recognizes that there's an unidentified face in it. If the app doesn't recognize a face then you will not get the option to link a person to it in any way.
Tagging
How to manually tag a face?
In order to identify a face manually in Google Photos, simply pull the photo in question upward or tap on the three-dotted button to open the EXIF menu. Here, you will find a 'People' tab with an edit icon on the right. Just tap on this icon, select the face you want to tag, and hit the '+' button to add that person's name.
Information
After tagging, more photos will be automatically tagged
Once you add a name manually for a face, Google Photos will automatically recognize that face in future photos and group them with the one tagged manually in your library, provided you have the face grouping feature turned on in the app.