Client galleries with face recognition and photo search (2026)

Which client gallery platforms let wedding guests find their photos by selfie or keyword, how the search works for guests, what it means for privacy, and when to switch it off.

A wedding gallery has 600 photos and a guest wants the 12 they are in. Face search lets them take a selfie and get those 12. Keyword search lets them type “cake” or “first dance” and get those moments. Of the eight platforms we checked on 12 September 2026, two publish guest search on their pricing pages. We make one of them, FOCL, so read the table with that in mind.

Who offers it

Platform	Guest selfie or face search	Guest keyword search	Search for the photographer	Which plan
FOCL Galleries	Yes	Yes	You tag photos by moment so searches like “first look” are exact; no AI search of your own uploads is listed	A per-gallery switch; video is the only gallery feature that needs a paid plan
Pic-Time	Yes	Yes	AI filter and keyword search of your uploads on Professional and up	Guest search is Advanced only: $42 a month billed annually, $50 monthly
Zenfolio	Not listed	Not listed	“Advanced image search” on all plans; AI gallery creation and tagging on Professional and up	Photographer-side only, as far as the pages state
Pixieset	Not verified	Not verified	Not verified
ShootProof	Not verified	Not verified	Not verified
CloudSpot	Not verified	Not verified	Not verified
SmugMug	Not verified	Not verified	Not verified
PASS	Not verified	Not verified	Not verified

“Not verified” means the feature does not appear on the company’s pricing page or the help center pages we read. Some of these platforms may offer it. We are not claiming they do not.

The honest split: Pic-Time has the deeper toolset for the photographer, with AI filtering of your own uploads from Professional up and a dedicated AI album designer on Advanced. FOCL has guest search without a plan tier attached, but the photographer’s side is manual tagging, not AI. See FOCL vs Pic-Time for the rest of that comparison.

How it works for a guest

The guest opens the gallery link, passes whatever gate you set (password, email registration, or nothing), and finds a search control.

Selfie search. The guest takes a photo of their own face on their phone, or uploads one. The platform compares it against the faces in the gallery and returns the photos that match. Nobody has to tag anyone in advance. The guest sees results, not a list of everyone’s faces.

Keyword search. The guest types a word. On FOCL, a search for “cake” finds the cake photos, and a search for a moment you have tagged, such as “first look” or “speeches”, returns exactly those photos rather than a guess. Tagging takes a few minutes per gallery and is worth doing for the six or seven moments guests ask about: getting ready, ceremony, family photos, first dance, speeches, cake, dancing.

On Pic-Time, keyword, face recognition and selfie search are listed for clients on the Advanced plan. The mechanics beyond that are not detailed on the pricing page.

For the guest, the practical result is that grandparents find themselves without scrolling and the couple stops fielding “can you send me the one of us” texts. For you, the result is fewer of those texts forwarded at 11pm.

Privacy: what to think through before you switch it on

Face search processes the faces of people who never signed your contract. The couple did; the 150 guests did not. That does not make it wrong to offer, but it does mean the decision is yours and the couple’s, made on purpose rather than by default.

Tell the couple, in writing. One line in the delivery email: “Guests can find their own photos by taking a selfie in the gallery. Tell us if you would rather we turned that off.” Most couples like it. The ones who do not will say so, and that is the point of asking.
Put a gate in front of it. Search inside a gallery that is password protected or behind email registration is a different thing from search on an open link. Password vs email protection explains which gate suits which wedding. On FOCL, galleries are never indexed by search engines whichever gate you choose, and an expiry date takes the gallery, and the search with it, offline on a date you pick.
Sort hidden and couple-only photos first. On FOCL a hidden photo is seen by nobody, and a couple-only photo is seen by the couple after they enter their email and never by guests. The couple can also hide photos from guests themselves with a 6-character code, and you can see what they hid and restore it. Do that pass before you publish, not after a guest has already found the photo of the bride’s father asleep at table 9.
Children. Weddings with a lot of children are the clearest case for leaving face search off. The parents did not agree to it, and a child’s face is a more sensitive thing to match than an adult’s.
Where you and the couple are. Some places regulate biometric data specifically; Illinois and the European Union are the usual examples. This is not legal advice. If you or the couple are somewhere with biometric rules, read them or ask someone who has.
Who is opting in. Only the person searching uploads a selfie. The other faces in the gallery are compared against it. So the opt-in sits with the searcher, not with the people being found, which is exactly why the gate in point 2 and the hidden-photo pass in point 3 matter. Keyword search involves no faces at all.

For a longer treatment of the trade-offs, see guest photo search and privacy and how to protect wedding photos online.

When to turn it off

The couple asks, for any reason.
The guest list includes people who would rather not be findable: a public figure, someone in a sensitive job, an estranged relative.
The wedding was heavy on children.
The gallery is on an open link with no password and no email registration.
The couple has hidden a lot of photos from guests and is nervous about the rest.
You are unsure about the rules where the couple lives.

On FOCL it is a per-gallery switch, so the default can be on for most weddings and off for the ones above. On Pic-Time it comes with the Advanced plan; the pricing page does not say whether it can be switched per gallery.

The five-minute setup

Decide with the couple. One line in the delivery email, or a question on the pre-wedding questionnaire.
Set the gate: password, or email registration if you also want the guest list as contacts.
Hide, or mark couple-only, anything that should not be findable.
Tag the six or seven moments people search for.
Set an expiry date, then switch search on.

The FOCL switches are in Photo search and Privacy settings in the help center.