Screenshot by Lance Whitney/ZDNETWant to learn more about a landmark, painting, animal, plant, food, or other object that you’ve snapped with your iPhone’s camera? Now you can, with an iOS 18.1 photo look-up feature called Enhanced Visual Search.By scanning and analyzing photos, this tool can categorize and even identify certain items via a web search. Enhanced Visual Search is also available on an iPad with iPadOS 18.1 and a Mac with MacOS Sequoia 15.1.Also: iOS 18.2 was killing my iPhone’s battery until I turned off this featureSounds great, right? Well, that depends. A similar feature called Visual Look Up first debuted with iOS 16, so this type of capability has been around for a couple of years. But Enhanced Visual Search is more advanced, as it shares your photos with Apple to help dig up the right details on the object. That difference has triggered privacy concerns among many people, especially since the sharing is enabled by default.How Enhanced Visual Search worksOpen a photo on your iPhone (or iPad or Mac) that contains an identifiable object. I chose a photo of the Statue of Liberty.If the item is supported by Enhanced Visual Search, the info icon at the bottom will display a small star in the upper left area. Tap the info icon, and the search will categorize the object as a landmark, artwork, animal, plant, or something else. Tap the Look Up option under the photo, and a web search will name the item and let you select any of the search results to learn more about it.Also: Looking to buy a new Apple device? You might want to hold off. Here’s whyBut here’s the rub. To run that search, Apple needs to analyze the photo. Since there are potentially millions and millions of landmarks, animals, and other common items that could be a match, the analysis can’t be done on your device. That’s why the photos need to be shared with Apple and analyzed on its servers.With privacy in mind, Apple has anticipated concerns over photo sharing. On a web page entitled Photos & Privacy, the company explained how Enhanced Visual Search works: More