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Assigning Faces

This page walks through the day-to-day workflow of clearing the pile of unassigned faces by assigning clusters of faces to people. For background on how Yaffo detects faces and what people are, see Faces & People.

Open the Faces Page

Open Faces from the top navigation. The page has two parts:

  • The main area shows one cluster of unassigned faces at a time.
  • The sidebar holds the Actions panel (assign or ignore faces, create a person) and the Filters panel (how faces are grouped).

The header reports how much work is left.

The Faces page showing an unassigned face cluster and its review sidebar

Choose How Faces Are Grouped

Use the Filters panel to control grouping before you assign anything.

  • Group by — Similarity clusters visually similar unassigned faces together, which is the best way to make a first pass. People instead matches faces to people you already have.
  • Similarity Threshold — how strict grouping is. Higher values make tighter, cleaner groups; lower values make larger, looser ones. Start with the default 50%, then adjust it as you learn what works for the current batch.
  • Faces to analyze — how many unassigned faces to pull in and cluster at a time. This is the batch size, not the number of thumbnails shown at once.

After changing a filter, click Apply Filters.

The Actions and Filters panels used while reviewing unassigned faces

Assign a Cluster

With a cluster in front of you, assign it in three steps.

1. Pick the person. Choose someone from Assign to Person. The selector is searchable, so you can type to filter a long list.

The Assign to Person selector open with the Bennett family choices

2. Refine the selection. Every face in the cluster starts selected, marked by a blue border and checkmark. Click any face that does not belong to remove it from the assignment. Use Clear selection when you would rather start with nothing selected and add individual faces back.

A face cluster with its first face removed from the current selection

3. Assign. Click Assign Selected. Yaffo confirms the assignment and moves straight to the next cluster so you can keep going.

Work Through Multiple Clusters

Because Yaffo advances automatically, review becomes a rhythm: assign the current cluster, then review the next one—often for a different person. The header count updates when Yaffo loads the next batch.

Two buttons on each cluster help you keep moving:

  • Skip cluster leaves the cluster unassigned and jumps to the next one.
  • Shuffle swaps in a different sample from the same cluster. It is available only when a cluster contains more faces than the current thumbnail page.

Quick Assignment

Once a cluster is obviously one person, you can assign it without touching the sidebar:

  • In Group by People mode, Assign to Name buttons appear when Yaffo has a strong guess. Click one to assign the selected faces in a single step.
  • Keyboard shortcuts speed up repeated assignment. The sidebar lists a number key for each displayed person; select faces and press that number to assign them. Use the gear beside Keyboard Shortcuts to choose and order those people. Other shortcuts:
    • Shift + Click — select a range of faces.
    • Enter — assign selected faces to the chosen person.
    • i or 0 — ignore selected faces.
    • ? — open the on-page help.

A people-grouped cluster with a one-click assignment suggestion

Ignore Faces

Not every face is worth keeping. Select the faces you don't want and click Ignore Selected for:

  • blurry or partial faces;
  • background or incidental faces;
  • false detections;
  • people you don't want to track.

Ignoring a face removes it from the review pile without assigning it to anyone. It does not affect the original photo.

Refresh Between Passes

When the biggest clusters are gone and only loose, mixed groups remain, reload the page. Yaffo clusters the current unassigned pile again for the next pass. Lowering the Similarity Threshold can pull stragglers together, but review looser groups more carefully. As your catalog of people grows, the built-in Auto-assign faces automation can also assign confident matches when new photos are indexed.

Ask Yaffo for Help

Ask Yaffo can do some of this work in words: "find more photos of Maya", "group the unassigned faces that look alike", or "ignore the faces in the background of the concert photos". It proposes the assignments or ignores as a change you approve, with the number of faces it affects, and most of these changes can be undone.