Tutorials for the smart tools: find the people and pets in your library, search by describing a photo or by the words in it, build albums from rules, clear out duplicates, add keywords automatically and browse your photos on a map.
These tools look at your photos so you do not have to sort them by hand, and they run on your own computer rather than in the cloud. Face recognition is opt-in. The map is the one place that needs the internet, for map pictures and place names, and its guide says exactly what is sent.
How to Find and Name the People in Your PhotosOpen People, then Faces. Turn on face recognition when asked, click Scan New Photos, then click Add name under a group of faces and type a name. Everything stays on your computer.
Beginner
5 min
How to Find Your Pets in Your PhotosOpen People, then Pets. Pluto Photos groups the pets it finds. Open a group, click Name this pet, and merge groups of the same animal with Merge with. Detection settings tune how sure it must be.
Beginner
3 min
Search and smart albums
Tutorial
Level
Time
How to Search Photos by What Is in ThemOpen Discover, then Contextual Search. Wait for the library to be indexed, type what you are looking for such as golden dog, and press Search. Results are ranked by match percentage.
How to Create a Smart Album With RulesOpen Organize, then Smart Albums. Name the album, choose a rule such as Has Faces, add more with Add Rule, choose Match ALL or ANY, check the preview and click Create.
Intermediate
4 min
Clean up and tag
Tutorial
Level
Time
How to Find and Remove Duplicate PhotosOpen Organize, then Duplicates, choose what to scan and click Scan for Duplicates. Compare each group, click Keep Recommended to mark the extras, then click Delete Marked and confirm. The files go to Recently Deleted, where you can restore them for 30 days.
Intermediate
6 min
How to Pick the Best Photo From a Set of Similar ShotsOpen Organize, then Duplicates, choose Near only and scan. Turn on Best Shots to score each photo from 0 to 100 on focus, exposure, contrast and color, compare the group, then keep the one you like and move the rest to Recently Deleted.
Intermediate
5 min
How to Auto-Tag Photos and Export Keywords to Lightroom as XMPOpen Discover, then Auto-Tag. Click Run auto-tagging to add keywords to every indexed photo, then Export tags to XMP to write a .xmp sidecar file next to each photo for Lightroom, Bridge or digiKam.
Advanced
5 min
Places and trips
Tutorial
Level
Time
How to See Your Photos on a MapOpen Places, then Map. Photos with GPS data are clustered on the map and listed by place. Click a place to zoom in and see its photos. Map pictures and place names are loaded online.
Beginner
3 min
How to Turn Your Trips and Events Into Albums AutomaticallyOpen Places, then Trips. Pluto Photos lists trips and events it found from your photo dates and places. Click Create album on one, or Create all trips. The album appears in the sidebar under Trips.
