Faces and people
Vixlo finds the faces in your photographs and gathers them into people, listed in the side panel so that one click narrows the pass to a person's frames. This page covers where the People section is, how it fills itself and what each circle means: read it when the circles first appear, or when the section says something you did not expect.
Where the People section is
The side panel on the left of the cull page has three panes. The first is Groups, the layers button at the top of the panel's narrow rail. The People section sits in that pane, under the grouping tree and the proposals block, and above Places and Saved searches. Press [ to show or hide the panel's body; clicking the pane's button when that pane is already open does the same.
The scan
There is nothing to start. As a library opens, and again after every import, Vixlo reads the frames it has not read yet, in the background. Each frame's preview is read on this Mac, the faces in it are found with macOS's own face detection, and the faces are gathered into people. While the scan runs the section's header counts — 12 of 127 — and until the first circles appear the section reads Finding faces · 12 of 127. You can cull while it runs.
A library in which no photograph has been read yet starts its scan as it opens, so its section reads Finding faces · 0 of 127 from the first moment. In a library that already has circles the caption is not drawn: the header counts alone while a scan runs. The section reads Nobody yet. Faces are found on this Mac as a library opens, and grouped by look. only in a library that has no photographs to read.
A face that is very small in the frame, about a fiftieth of the frame's long side or less (a little less with a face model), is passed over. It is not recorded, so it is in no circle, in no count and has no close-up in In this frame. In a large group the back row can be too small to count.
Only frames that have not been read are scanned. A library you open again with no new photographs has nothing to do, and the header does not count. A photograph whose file has changed or moved on disk is read again. One case is an import that brings a frame the library already had inside the library's folder, such as a frame an earlier version of Vixlo catalogued on the card (Importing): the frame points at its new copy, and that copy is read once more while the header counts. It is the same frame, so its names and corrections stay with it.
What a circle is
The section draws a circle per person, five to a row, most frames first. A person is shown once they have been seen in at least two faces, and at least one of those faces is large enough to read — about one fortieth of the frame's width. One face is a face, not yet a person. Two or more faces that look alike but are all smaller than that are kept and not drawn: they get no circle until a larger face of that person turns up, and they are not in the faces seen once line below either.
Under a named person is their name. Under everyone else is the number of frames they are in. Hover a circle for Maya · 59 frames, or 59 frames for an unnamed person. The number never counts frames in the bin.
Under the circles a line counts the faces that belong to nobody seen twice — 14 faces seen once — the other guests and passers-by. Before any person has been seen twice the section reads Nobody seen twice yet.
The circle shows the person's clearest face: a large, sharp one, cut from a plain read of the photograph, before any develop settings, never from a cropped or straightened version of it. A crop you make on the edit page never leaves a circle showing a wall or a shoulder.
Grouped by look
Without a face model, Vixlo 0.1 groups faces by look: each face is compared by its hair, its glasses and the shirt under it as much as by the face itself. The same person in another outfit, or on another day, can land in two circles. Naming both circles the same merges them, and when two circles sit close enough to be one person the section asks whether they are; see Naming a person. A face filed under the wrong person comes out with Not Maya on its frame; see When the grouping is wrong.
Vixlo 0.1 does not come with a face model, and the app has no way to add one: on a Mac with only the app installed, grouping by look is how People works. A face model is a separate file on the Mac, and Vixlo ▸ Models… lists any that are there. With one present, the scan groups faces by the face itself, and a different outfit or afternoon no longer splits a person. The next time a library opens after a model is added, every frame is read again and the circles are empty while it reads. Your names are kept, and so are your corrections, apart from one rare case in frames with a very small face; When a face model arrives or goes describes both. Face models says how to tell which grouping you have, what Vixlo 0.1 cannot do about adding a model, and what removing one does. Known limits says what terms those models come with.
What the scan never does
A person is a way of looking at the pass, exactly as a star is. No scan writes a decision, a rating or a label, and nothing about any frame changes when its faces are found. Selecting a person narrows what you are looking at and nothing more.
Where the people are kept
The faces, the circles and the names you give are kept in the library folder, and nothing leaves this Mac. Copy or move the library folder and its people go with it: open it from its new place and the circles and names are there at once.
The scan then reads every frame again. It counts a frame as read only while the photograph's file is where it was, and as it was, when it was read — and in a copied or moved folder every file is somewhere new. While it reads, the header counts as it does after an import, and every name and correction you made is kept.