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Naming a person

A circle in the People section starts out unnamed, with a frame count under it; naming it puts the name under the circle, on the chip when the person is selected, under their face in In this frame, into search and into the names of sessions. This page covers giving, changing and removing a name, and the two ways two circles become one.

Giving a person a name​

  1. Right-click the circle in the People section of the Groups pane.
  2. Choose Name this person…. A field opens under the circle, ready to type into.
  3. Type the name and press ↩. Esc closes the field without naming anyone.

The name takes the place of the count under the circle. Hover the circle and it reads Maya · 59 frames. The name is written to the library the moment you press ↩ and is there when the library opens again.

A circle with the name field open under it

Renaming and un-naming​

Right-click a named circle and the first item reads Rename… instead. The field opens with the name in it. Type a new name and press ↩ to change it; clear the field and press ↩ to take the name away, and the frame count comes back under the circle. Spaces at either end of a name are dropped.

A shared name merges two circles​

Name a circle with a name another circle already carries — capitals do not matter, so maya and Maya are the same name — and the two circles become one. The merged person has the frames of both, the clearer of the two faces as their picture, and the name. If the circle you renamed was the selected one, the merged person is now selected and the pass is the frames of both.

This is how you join two circles that are one person. Vixlo 0.1 groups faces by look, so the same person in two outfits sometimes lands in two circles. There is no undo for a merge — ⌘Z does not reach anything done in People — but a face that does not belong can be taken out again with Not Maya on its frame; see When the grouping is wrong.

Two circles the scan nearly joined​

When two circles sit close enough that they could be one person, but not close enough for the scan to have joined them on its own, a small row appears under the circles: Are these the same person?, the two faces, and two buttons, Merge and Not the same.

  • Merge folds the circle with fewer faces into the other one, and the other circle's name is the one kept. A shared name joins circles the same way, but the circle it folds in is the one you renamed, not the smaller. Read the caution below before you rely on it.
  • Not the same keeps them as two people and records it: the pair is not offered again, and a scan of new photographs does not join them.

There is at most one suggestion at a time, the closest pair first, and nothing merges until you click. Two circles you have named differently are never offered — two names are two people, however alike they look. A named circle and an unnamed one can be: that is the useful case, a small stray circle that is also Maya, and for that case naming the stray circle is safer than Merge.

The row under the circles asking whether two faces are the same person, with Merge and Not the same

In Vixlo 0.1

Merge is less reliable than a shared name, in two ways.

  • It can lose a name. The circle folded in gives up its name. The app shows how many frames a circle is in, not how many faces it holds, so you cannot tell reliably which circle is the smaller. If it is the named one, the merged circle comes out unnamed.
  • It may not last. A name is what holds faces together through a later scan. When the merged circle has no name, the scan groups its faces again after the next import and after any Not …, This is … or Not the same you choose anywhere in the library, and the two circles can come apart, with Are these the same person? back under them.

Give the circles the same name instead of pressing Merge. Name one circle with Name this person…, then name the other the same: the circle you rename is always the one folded in, whichever is larger, and the name keeps the two together from then on. When one circle already has a name, give the other that name. If you have already pressed Merge on two unnamed circles, name the merged circle now.

A name is binding​

What you say outranks what the scan measures. Once a person has a name:

  • their faces stay one person when a new card is copied in or the library is opened from a new place;
  • two named people are never merged automatically;
  • a later scan cannot hand a named person's identity to a bigger unnamed circle that happens to take in her faces.

One rare case can move a name: after a face model arrives or goes, a frame with a very small face can number its faces differently and the name can sit on another face. When a face model arrives or goes says what to check.

Unnamed circles are the scan's to regroup as the library grows, so name the people you care about and leave the rest. Names are kept in the library folder and never leave this Mac.