How to Work with People in Lightroom

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Working with people can have its own challenges as a photographer, so it’s a relief that dealing with them in Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic is much easier.

People recognition is a feature that’s ideal for handing off to software. Instead of asking you to manually assign keywords to tag people in your photos, Lightroom identifies faces in images, including new ones you add to your library. With the computer doing the work, the next time you need to find a photo of someone, all you have to do is choose that person to bring up all the photos in which they appear.

New Library, Who Dis?

The People feature in Lightroom CC relies on Adobe’s Sensei technology running on the Creative Cloud servers. When your images are uploaded to the cloud (the default option in Lightroom CC), Sensei uses machine learning to identify faces and then match them with others in your library.

This approach pays off in two ways: one, all the processing is done on the server, so you don’t need to be running Lightroom CC in the background for it to happen; two, since all the data is on the server, the People data is identical in the mobile versions of Lightroom CC that run on iOS and Android devices.

Click the My Photos button, or press the P key (Figure). You may be inclined to click the icon below My Photos that looks like two people, but that’s the Sharing button; I’m surprised Adobe went with that icon, since it’s confusing if you’re looking for the People feature. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve clicked that instead of the My Photos button… but I digress.

Lightroom creates an entry for every face it finds. Click a person to view the photos in which they appear, and type the person’s name in the Add Name field to identify them.

Most likely, especially at first, Lightroom will ask you to verify that other photos containing a similar-looking person are the same as the one you’ve identified. If the one that’s spotlighted is correct, click the Yes, Merge button. You may end up going through a few iterations of merging as Lightroom identifies photos that resemble the person.

Although Lightroom does a good job of identifying people, it’s not always correct, such as when it’s faced with siblings or other family members. Or, sometimes you’ll see a match that isn’t even a face, like an ear or something. In that case, click No, and then enter the person’s name. The database continues to learn as more images are fed to it, so your correction helps nudge this process along.

It’s also possible to manually merge folks in the People view, when you see two or more instances of what you know to be the same person.

  1. Click the three dots menu (…) and choose Merge People.
  2. Select the icons for the person.
  3. Click the Merge button.
  4. In the dialog that appears, confirm that they’re the same person by clicking Merge.

Set as Cover Photo

The People view focuses on each person’s face for their icon, but you can use any photo of them. Click a person to view their photos, and then scroll until you find a better option. Lightroom’s filters are active in this view, so it may be helpful to display, say, only photos marked 3 stars and higher.

When you’ve located one, select it and choose Set as Cover Photo from the three dots menu (…) and choose Set as Cover Photo.

View Faces in a Subset of Photos

The People view reveals all the people in all of your photos, which might be too broad. What if you want to see which people are in photos from a specific date, or in an album? There’s another place to find them.

  1. In the My Photos panel, select an album, date, or other subset of photos. You can also select a range of photos in the grid view.
  2. Make sure all the images you’re viewing are selected, not just one. Choose Edit > Select All for a selected subset.
  3. Click the Keywords button, or press the K key. People that appear in the selected images are listed at the top of the Keywords panel.
  4. Click a person’s icon to view just the photos that include them.

Hide and show people

If your library is like mine, you may have shots that include crowds of people. Lightroom’s algorithms search for any face, so the People view may include dozens or hundreds of people you don’t know. There’s no sense having them clutter the view, so Lightroom includes the ability to hide people.

  1. Open the My Photos panel and click the People button.
  2. Click the three dots menu (…) and choose Show and Hide People.
  3. Click the checkmark button beside the people you want to hide from view.
  4. Click Done when you’re finished.

You can also hide people one at a time in the People view. Right-click their icon and choose Hide Person.

Here’s a tip: Before you go into the Show and Hide interface, click the three dots menu (…) and set the sort method to Count. That makes it easier to get to the people who appear in only a few photos.

If you accidentally hid someone—or maybe you and your ex made up?—click the three dots menu (…) and choose Show and Hide People, find that person, and click them to make them visible again.

Deal with ID Errors

Lightroom’s facial recognition is pretty good, but sometimes it makes mistakes—or you may have merged two different people inadvertently. In that case, select a person in the People view, scroll to the picture(s) that doesn’t belong, and choose Remove Photo from Person from the three dot menu (…).

Become a People Person

Once you set up the People feature in Lightroom CC and define some people, it becomes easy to locate photos of friends, on both the desktop and mobile versions of the software. The days of scrolling through your library hoping to catch sight of a person are over. Now, you can work on those people skills behind the camera.

Author and photographer Jeff Carlson (@jeffcarlson, jeffcarlson.com) writes for publications such as DPReview, CreativePro, and Macworld, and is a contributing editor at TidBITS (tidbits.com). He is the author of numerous books, including The Photographer’s Guide to Luminar AI, Take Control of Your Digital Photos, Take Control of Your Digital Storage, and Take Control of Apple Watch, among many other titles. He also co-hosts the podcasts PhotoActive and Photocombobulate, and leads photography workshops in the Pacific Northwest. He believes there's never enough coffee, and does his best to test that theory.
  • Brigt Agnar Mikkelsen says:

    Hi and thanks for the article.
    Can Lightroom store face tags to image. To me it is important that all information is embedded in the image, that would make it more convenient to share images, and I would not be bound to a certain piece of software if I later on would like to stop using Adobe.

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