For those of you in the Mac world, the newest update to Photos has some very interesting “recognition” features. It’s had pretty good facial recognition in the past, but that feature has been taken to another level, Object recognition now spots things like trees, boats, beaches, bicycles, mountains and more. Another remarkable feature takes faces, dates, or a location and makes a “Memory” album from it’s recognition capabilities.

This can be helpful in finding a photo when you can’t remember the date. Or if you’re just curious to see how many beach photos you’ve got in your library by simply typing in “beach” in the Search area.

You can’t imagine how many “boats” the Search function located in my library. It even distinguished between sailing boats and boats in general.

Another feature that’s been around for a while in Photos is the ability to find a photo by location.  If you’re using an iPhone or camera that has geo-location, Photos puts those photos on it’s world map.

You can zoom the map to more detail expanding a country, a state, a national park to see where each photo was taken. Yes, geo-location on photos posted on Facebook or Instagram may be problematic if you don’t want someone tagging your home, but for travel and adventure it’s  a real advantage.

I’ve used the object identification to find a specific bike packing rig I used on the Great Divide ride for example. With almost 25,000 photos in my photo library at this time it’s helpful. It’s uncanny how the software can suss out a bike wheel, or handlebars.

One new feature I’d never imagined is how the updated Photo App puts together “Memories” albums that are complete slideshows with music and titles based on a location, time period or most amazingly on two or more people, selecting only photos based on those selected people’s faces.

Photos (the application) selected a trip in 2010 that McKenny’s and Kurt and Carol were on for a “memorable” slideshow for example. What a super surprise and joy to see a slideshow featuring friends from over 6 years ago. You can change the title and/or the music with a click if you’d prefer a better title than “June 6”.

If you haven’t explored this new version of Photos in OS X Sierra you’ve got a wonderful treat coming.