It seems silly to go to all the trouble to assign "Face" data to thousands of photos, but not make it possible to use that data to locate them outside of that application.

I know that that metadata is stored in the "library" database for Aperture/iphoto, rather than on the actual files (which is too bad). And I can even potentially see why it might create challenges for spotlight to use it, since spotlight if presumably a file index system, not a media organizer, but surely the media browser used across the other OSX apps is intended to use it? The media browser's whole purpose seems to be to let you easily locate and reference the items you organize in one of the ilife apps (iphoto or Aperture, in this case) from the others (say, imovie, or Mail).

It's particularly vexing since the photo app on the iphone sorts by faces by default. Additionally, the mac-based media browser does access smart albums and folders, so you could establish a workaround by creating a smart album for each "face" or place, or tag, and access them that way, but it seems like there must be an easier way.

Am I missing something?