A couple weeks ago, Kimberley needed to wash a garment for the first time and asked me if I knew how to translate the icons on the tag. I did not, but I remembered that Photos can translate these as part of its Visual Look Up feature.
Visual Look Up works to identify various objects in photos and videos, such as plants, animals, food, landmarks, and books. This page generated by Arc Search provides a list but may not be complete.
The feature is available on iPhone models running iOS 15 or later, certain iPad models running at least iOS 15.1, and Macs running macOS 12 or later.
Get Info
On any device, open a photo or pause a video and notice if the Info button 
has stars adjacent to the circle (and an icon in place of the “i”).
Click the button or press Command+I to show the Info panel. On iPhone/iPad, you can also swipe up on the image.
Look Up
Click the button that appears in the middle of the image or tap the Look Up area at the top of the Info panel on iPhone/iPad. Doing so reveals information about the identified item.
View Results
In the case of the garment tag, Photos shows laundry care information and translates each icon. On iPhone, the Siri Knowledge results show five of the icons on the tag. Tap Show More to see others. Tap a result to learn more about it online.
On Mac, Photos shows a popover with the results and a navigation bar at the bottom. Swipe across the bar or click the arrow buttons to browse the result listings. Tap the reference link (e.g., “ISO”) for more information about the icon.
Visual Look Up is Apple’s term for “image recognition” and the ability to fetch associated information.
The feature is inherently tied to the ability to search your photos for hundreds of specific objects, as listed here. However, this is not an exhaustive list either, as it lacks any reference to laundry care icons.
What have you discovered you can find in your photo library?
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