Using Faces in Aperture 3

The simplest method of accessing Faces is from the Name icon in the toolbar. This is useful when you’ve found a photo of someone you’d like to identify in your Project or LIbrary. Click this to identify someone.

If Aperture recognizes a face exists in the photo (even if it’s covered in clown makeup) it will place a marker under the face that either says the name of the person (if you’ve already tagged them) and will say unnamed if you have not.

There is also a floating palette (usually at the bottom of the screen, I’ve relocated it for the screenshot) that allows you to Add Missing Face, which is useful if Aperture does not automatically pick out the face in the photo.

If you click the checkbox for Limit suggestions to project (which is misnamed, as it’ll limit to a Folder or Album as well).

If you know the name, you can type it in where the box says Unnamed. Aperture communicates with Address Book, so it will look there to auto-complete the name as you’re typing.

Add a name to your face and the click the arrow button and you can jump into all the places where Aperture has found a matching face.

You’ll jump into the other found Faces for this person. If you click the All Faces button you can jump back to the main Faces corkboard, which you can also get to via the next step.

Or you can use the Date dropdown to change to a different sort for your view.

The first way to jump into the Faces mode is to click on the Faces button on the toolbar.

Important Note: Faces is a view mode, so if you want to leave Faces you have to switch to Browser, Split View, or Viewer. Clicking on other Projects of Folders or Albums will leave you in Faces mode but focusing only on those selections.

At the top of the Corkboard are all the Faces already recognized and tagged. At the bottom are a collection of Faces found that need to be identified. As you identify them, they get replaced with other Faces until you’re done identifying all the Faces found in Aperture.

Since I’ve already tagged my friend Phil, Aperture asks me to confirm that this face is indeed his. To confirm, press the checkbox. To say it’s not Phil, check the x.

If you’d like to skip tagging this one, press Skip.

When you’ve tagged a few , double click on one of the thumbnails on the Corkboard to jump into a person’s Faces mode.

In addition to tagging my friend Phil, I’ve also tagged my friend Maia. After having tagged just three pictures of her, Aperture’s already finding her in other shots. The top three images are the ones that I found.

And Aperture is telling me that Maia "may also be in the photos below".

On the bottom of the toolbar are a selection of buttons. Since Photos is grayed out that indicates the mode we’re in is the Photos mode, in other words we’re seeing the people in the context of the whole photograph Faces has found someone in.

If I jump to the Faces mode I see the area of the photo Aperture used to select the face.

By pressing the Confirm button on the lower toolbar I switch to a Confirm Faces mode. Here I can click on a photo to confirm it, or click twice to indicate it’s not who Aperture thinks it is.

I can also select multiple images at a time by dragging my cursor over images I want to confirm and Option-dragging to reject.

When you’re done with that group click the Done button. If Aperture detects more people it thinks match your selected face it will present them again under the gray bar. If not, it will simply display all the photos tagged with the selected name.

When you’re done click the All Faces button on the top left toolbar or switch to the Browser, Viewer or Split View mode to leave Faces.

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