It’s summertime, and everyone’s hitting the road! Perfect time to remind everyone about the iPhone camera’s Visual Look Up feature. This nifty tool can identify plants, animals, landmarks, and even food items. Imagine capturing and remembering all your travel highlights with ease.
As long as you’re using iOS 15 or later, this built-in gem is ready to use. Here’s how you do it:
- Open the Photos App and select an image: I picked a bird snap from my Florida Bird Album.
- Look for the Info icon: It’s the third one from the right, an “i” with a star above it. That’s your Visual Look Up signal.
- Tap it and presto!: My chosen bird was identified as an American Kestrel. Tapping the arrow led to more info and links. (Even images not taken with your phone get identified, cool right?)
All of the images are screenshots from my phone , so don’t try to tap on any of the icons shown. It won’t work!)
Tapping on the arrow as shown in the first image, leads to links about the American Kestrel and the family of falcons.
Now, Visual Look Up isn’t flawless, but it’s pretty impressive. I tested it with various travel pics:
- Animals: Nailed it, mostly. Common and not-so-common critters got ID’d , though photo quality matters.
- See some examples below:
No problems identifying these antelope species from a Kenyan safari.
The big ‘gator was easy, but the little guy was confusing. There was no star above the Info icon, so the Look Up feature didn’t work here.
I couldn’t remember the name of this little guy, but Visual Look Up gave me 2 choice, and Bingo! I remembered the name Southern Viscacha and now I could a caption to identify it properly.
Landmarks: More hit-and-miss. Sometimes it identified landmarks when I expected animal IDs, like in my llama photos from Machu Picchu. In the middle pic below, it recognized Machu Picchu, but it didn’t pinpoint the Temple of the Sun. For the last image below, it didn’t recognize the llama or Machu Picchu! Go figure!
I got similar results for some iconic images from Yellowstone National Park.
Score points for the specific ID for Grand Prismatic Spring for Image 1 above. A decent ID of an image from Yellowstone National Park for Image 2. Nada for Image 3, also taken at Yellowstone National Park.
Food was the most fun:
- Piranha: Identified as a fish but it didn’t specify piranha. Yet it offered some easy recipes for other types of fish. (No clue, though, that it was a live piranha for the third image. I thought the teeth would be an easy give-away!)
Causa (a Peruvian dish): Mostly successful. Traditional round causas were identified with recipe links. A square causa? Not so much.
Oh, and don’t miss out on the iPhone’s Translate app. Snap a menu pic in a foreign country (Image 1), tap the text icon that appears in the bottom right, then the Translate icon on the bottom left (Image 2). And voila – instant translation! (Image 3) Handy if your Spanish isn’t up to par (like mine). More on Translate in a future post.
Overall, Visual Look Up is a fantastic tool with room to grow (and it surely will). Use it on your travels to ID new things or tag your old photos accurately. Identify neighborhood plants for your landscaping or name that butterfly you snapped. The possibilities are endless!
Share your experiences and any success or fails you’ve had with Visual Look Up below!
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