Understanding the User Flow

To search using a group photo in a photo collection folder , all photos in the photo collection folder must be processed and analyzed by the application first.

When you process photos in a photo collection folder , the information about your photos is stored in a database and is saved along with the time the photo was processed.

This database is stored on your device and the information in the database is used to find and match photos.

Photos in the photo collection folder which are not processed cannot be searched on, so if there were unprocessed photos in the photo collection folder , you might miss photos in your search result

So the high level user flow is:

1. Process all photos within your photo collection folder .
2. Search using a group photo .
3. View search result photos. Export/copy them to another location if required.

User Guide - How to Process Your First Folder & Find a Group’s Matching Photos

The groups app has 2 tabs in the top section:

1. Process
2. Search

Process Your Photos

1. First, you must store all photos to be processed in a folder. This is the photo collection folder. For this guide, it is stored at C:\Users\Pradeep\Desktop\PhotoCollectionFolder .
2. In the process tab, you can select the folder to process as C:\Users\Pradeep\Desktop\PhotoCollectionFolder .
3. The app will display the total number of photos present in the folder.
   1. Note: This includes all photos present in every subfolder of C:\Users\Pradeep\Desktop\PhotoCollectionFolder as well, so if we had 200 photos in C:\Users\Pradeep\Desktop\PhotoCollectionFolder and 50 photos in C:\Users\Pradeep\Desktop\PhotoCollectionFolder\subfolder , the total displayed in the Groups app will be 250
4. You can click on start processing and wait for the photos to get processed.
   1. Generally the speed of processing will be 5+ photos/second on standard Windows machines with a good processor and at least 16GB RAM. If you are using a Mac with an M-series chip, you can expect the speed of processing to be 13+ photos/second.
   2. Processing is a heavy task, and during processing, there is a slight chance that your machine may slow down if you are using other applications.

Search for a Group’s Photos

1. After the photos are processed, you can go to the Search tab.
2. In the search tab, you can create a new search group by clicking on the + button
3. You can upload the group photo , give a name to this group (for easy access), and click on search.
4. All the matches of the group photo ’s search result will be visible on the right.
5. You can click on a photo to view it in full screen.

Select & Export Photos

1. Selecting Photos: In the photo grid, you can select photos by either clicking on the photo’s select box in each photo’s bottom right corner, or by using ctrl+click on the photo itself. (cmd+click if you are on Mac)
   1. Tip: You can use ctrl+shift+click to select a range after selecting a starting photo.
2. Exporting Photos: Once you have selected the photos you’d like to export/copy, you can click on the Export button in the top right corner.
3. You can now select a destination folder where you’d like to export, eg: C:\Users\Pradeep\Desktop\Exports . If you named your group as Group1, the selected photos will be copied to C:\Users\Pradeep\Desktop\Exports\Group1 and you can find your selected photos in that folder.
4. IMPORTANT: Please do not export your groups into the same folder from which you are processing, eg: C:\Users\Pradeep\Desktop\PhotoCollectionFolder . This is because the new photos you’ve exported will be treated as unprocessed photos and the count of photos added will be shown as unprocessed in the app.

We have discussed the complete flow of the application above.