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by stephenr 605 days ago
For anyone in Apple's ecosystem: photos on iPhone (I believe on Mac too but haven't checked) does this out of the box; details of how to use it are here: https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/iphone/iph21c29a1cf/io...

As with their live text (ocr on an image), subject selection (remove background) etc, there are probably slightly better implementations in dedicated apps, but for most casual uses the built in is likely more than sufficient.

2 comments

Just tried comparing pictures of two trees (inc leaf closeups) between PictureThis and native Photos app. PictureThis got it right, was consistent re species when comparing closeups to wide tree shot, and gave lots of extra info. Photos app got the genus right but different species for the closeup and wide shots; not very helpful. The lack of organised extra info is also a pity. One of the nicest features of PictureThis is how it shows your photo vs other matching photos from its database, letting you visually confirm if the result is accurate.
Thats why I said "for casual uses". Most people probably don't lookup plants often enough, with that level of specificity required, to justify $100 a year for an app that does just that - the built in one also works for animals and food.

When I've used the built in lookup it also shows me other examples of the species it identifies the plant as.

Good catch!