Every now and again when I have some time and feel like giving myself a headache,
I open the People album in the Photos app on my iPhone.
The People Album is an automated album that applies facial recognition to:
(1) identify objects in photos that are faces, (2) group faces in photos that it
recognizes are the same (I chose my wording carefully; some of the thumbnails
on my phone are of my dog); and (3) allow you to identify the faces the recognition
software has identified.
One can identify these faces most easily by adding a name to the photo or group
of photos. The OS will attempt to match the name you type with one of your contacts
in real-time (as you type).
Identifying people in photos like this has some real benefits. Among them, you
can type the name of a person into your search and the OS will find photos of that
person.
I strongly suspect that this people album automation occurs as images are
introduced to your "All Photos" album, regardless of source. If it's an image,
and it has a face in it, you'll see that face in your People album even if you
subsequently delete the photo from your device.
Another observation is that the People album doesn't care whether you care
about the faces you're seeing. Want proof? Say you're attending your daughter's
recital. She and the other 120 kids that make up the 3rd grade class are standing
on risers on stage. You take a picture of the group because that's what parents do.
I hope you like every kid in that picture, because you're going to see them all every
time you spelunk that People album. As I understand it, there's no way you can tell
the software to "forget" or "hide" all of those kids except yours. You can identify
your child, add that photo others of your child, and "favorite" that group, but
you can't remove those 120 thumbnails — even after you delete the photo.
I can imagine this would be way worse if you're forced to sift through tons of
pics of the lover who dumped you last week.
UPDATE:
After writing the initial post, I became curious about one more thing --
whether the People album was including faces from the Recently Deleted album.
That album appears with the icon of a white trash can inside of a light gray circle.
Recently Deleted contains all of the photos you deleted over the past
30 days. The thumbnails of photos in this album are displayed with tiny captions
centered at bottom of how many days remain until that photo is permanently deleted.
Happily, one can navigate this album much like any other in the Photos app.
I found that the People album actually does include the Recently Deleted
album. So, for those faces you just can't bear to see in the People album any longer,
you can ease your pain by "speeding up time": Simply select the photos from the
Recently Deleted album that you're sick of seeing, and delete them manually. The next
time you browse the People album, you won't see those faces again.
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