What's in that Picture?

You've used your fantastic smartphone to take a picture (landmark, flora, fauna, animals, books, art, etc.) but don't know or remember what it is.

Google has long had a tool called Google Lens that comes built-in to the Google Photo App on all Android Smartphones. It's available on iPhones if you use the Google Photo App and then use the Lens feature.

Finally, Apple has finally released a feature called Visual Look Up which brings this capability directly to your iPhone Photos App with iOS 15 (devices include iPhone XR, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and later).

This new iPhone feature means that iPhones do not have to store their photos in Google Photos to figure out what the picture is!

Hint: If Apple or Google don't recognize the object from one picture, take more pictures and give it another try!

Apple Visual Look Up

• Take a photo of the items you want to identify or use an existing photo.
• Open the Apple Photos App and Tap the photo you want to identify and look for the blue “i” icon at the bottom.
• If it has a little sparkly ring around it, then iOS has found something in the photo it can identify using machine learning. If no sparkly ring, then try another picture, even of the same item.
• Tap the icon, then click “Look Up” and it’ll usually show some useful information.

Google Lens

• Take a photo of the object you want more information about or use an existing photo.
• Open the Google Photos App and Tap the photo you want to identify.
• Tap the Google Lens icon at the bottom of the screen to see the information.