Use Faces with Facebook

If you have a Facebook account, you can use it with the Faces feature in iPhoto.

When you add names to your photos using Faces, and then share those photos on Facebook, Facebook can alert the named friend that new photos of him or her have been posted. Also, your friends can add names (known as “tags” on Facebook) to those published photos on Facebook, and those names are then synced back to the same photo in your library.

Here’s how it works: First, you set up your Facebook account in iPhoto. This ensures that the names of your Facebook friends appear as suggestions when you use Faces to name, or tag, people who appear in your photos.

Then you name people in your photos, and publish those photos to your Facebook account. Facebook automatically notifies the person whose face you named that there’s a new photo on Facebook.

When your Facebook friends add more tags to people in your published photos, those new names appear on the photo in your iPhoto library (as long as iPhoto recognizes that there is a face to go with the tag). If you confirm the tag, the photo appears on your Faces corkboard (if you hadn’t already named the person) or is added to the photos of that person in Faces.

To set up your Facebook account in iPhoto:

If you want iPhoto to look up names of your Facebook friends and suggest them as you name people in your photos, you need to set up your Facebook account first. This makes it easy for Facebook to send email notifications to your friends when you publish photos of them.

Note: If you don’t set up Facebook before naming people in your photos, you need to add an email address for each named person (see task below). The email address must match the one used for a person’s Facebook account. This allows Facebook to identify the person and send them an email notification that photos of them have been posted.

Choose iPhoto > Preferences, and then click Accounts.
Click the Add (+) button in the bottom-left corner of the Accounts window.
Choose Facebook from the pop-up menu that appears, and then click Add.
Type your Facebook name and password, select the Facebook terms and conditions checkbox, and then click Login.
Your Facebook account appears in the Source list below Web.
Close the Accounts window by clicking the red dot in the top left corner.

To name, or tag, people in your photo library:

Use Faces to add names to your photos in iPhoto.
If you’ve already set up your Facebook account, the names of your Facebook friends appear as suggestions when you type names.

To publish photos to Facebook:

See the instructions in this topic: Publish your photos to Facebook.
If you haven’t already set up your Facebook account in iPhoto, you can do so when you publish your photos for the first time.
Your photos appear in your Facebook news feed and photos section.
If you had set up your Facebook account in iPhoto before you named people in the photos and you used the suggested Facebook names, Facebook recognizes the name and sends a notification to that person that photos are available for them to view.
You can also add an email address for a person you’ve named (see next task). Facebook uses email addresses to recognize your Facebook friends and send them a notification email.

Your friends can remove their names from photos you publish on Facebook, but removing these “tags” affects only the photos as they appear on Facebook. The names you added using Faces are still visible in iPhoto.

To add an email address for a person in Faces:

Adding an email address for each Facebook friend is another way to help Facebook send that friend an email notification when you publish photos that include his or her name. The email address must match the one your friend used to sign up for Facebook.

This is useful if you named friends in Faces before setting up your Facebook account in iPhoto. However, if you named friends in iPhoto after setting up your Facebook account, you don’t need to add the email address too.

Click to select Faces in the Source list, and then select the Faces snapshot for the person you want.
Click the Info button in the toolbar to open the Information pane.
Click “Add an email address” and then type the person’s email address.
Note: If you want, you can add the person’s full name here, which makes it easier to search for the person. To do so, click “Add a full name” and then type the name.
When you’re finished, click Info to close the Information pane.

To see and confirm new names, or tags, added on Facebook:

Select your Facebook account in the Source list.
Your published albums appear in the main viewing window.
Select one of your published albums and double-click it to open and sync it.
A “pending” bar appears in the top-right corner of the window as the sync occurs.
Select any photo that a friend has added a name to, or tagged, in Facebook.
Double-click the selected photo to magnify it, and then click the Info button in the toolbar.

The new name appears on the photo with a Facebook icon next to it.
On the photo, click the new name under each face, and then click anywhere else on the photo to confirm it.
The name appears in the Information pane below Faces.
If you haven’t already named this person in other photos, you’ll see him or her appear on your Faces corkboard the next time you select Faces in the Source list.
To reject the name, click the name, and then click the X.
Note: Tags added on Facebook to Wall photos or profile photos won’t be synced back to iPhoto, even if you published the photos from iPhoto.

To see “likes” and comments for a photo:

Select a photo that people have commented on.
Click the Info button in the toolbar.
In the Information pane, click Sharing to open that section (if it’s not already open).
Likes and comments appear in this section. Do one or both of the following:
- To see who said they liked your photo and all comments, click the text, “One person likes your photo.” Facebook opens in another window to show that photo and all likes or comments.
- To see comments in iPhoto, use the scroll bar next to the comments in the Sharing section. The most recent comments are at the end of the comments list.
If you want to respond and you’re logged into Facebook, you can click the comment to open the same photo in Facebook.
If you’re not logged in, Facebook asks you to log in with your email address and password.

If tags added on Facebook don’t appear after you sync the published album:

If you know that friends on Facebook have added tags to your published photos, but the tags don’t appear on the photos in your iPhoto library, here are some possible reasons.

The sync wasn’t complete. Try resyncing your published albums. See step 1 of the task above: “To see and confirm new names, or tags, added on Facebook.”
The tag was added to a profile photo or a photo published on your Facebook Wall. Tags added to these photos won’t sync back to iPhoto, even if you published the photo from iPhoto.
iPhoto didn’t recognize a face in the photo that your Facebook friend tagged.
If you like the tag that was added in Facebook and want to add that person to Faces in your iPhoto library, do the following:
1. In iPhoto, manually add the person’s name to the photo.
2. Republish the Facebook album by closing the album and then reopening it. This syncs the album.
If you don’t want to add the person to Faces in your iPhoto library, you don’t have to do anything. The tags appear only on the photo as it appears in Facebook.