Jason Snell - Take Control of Photos

Jason Snell

This ebook was published in November 2018 by alt concepts inc. It was written by Jason Snell and edited by Scholle McFarland.

This book helps you get started with Apples Photos app for macOS and iOS. It focuses on importing libraries from older apps, managing your media inside Photos, and using Photos to edit and share your media with friends, relatives, and the world at large.

Take Control of Photos, version 1.0

Copyright 2018, The Incomparable Inc. All rights reserved.

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• Read the ebooks blog. You may find new tips or information, as well as a link to an author interview.

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To review background information that might help you understand this book better, such as finding System Preferences and working with files in the Finder, I recommend reading Tonya Engsts ebook Take Control of Mac Basics.

In 2002, Apple introduced iPhoto as a way for us to save our photos on our Macs inside a digital shoebox. At the time, Id owned a digital camera for three months, and had only a few hundred digital images. Over the years, as my photo library grew, Apple revised iPhoto, always trying to stay in front of the onslaught of thousands of digital photos accumulated over a lifetimeat least the lifetime of my two children.

By 2014, enough was more than enough. Apple decided it needed to start from scratch and ditch iPhoto and replace it with a single application, which would be calledin the prosaic style favored by Apple for its iOS appsPhotos. This would allow Apple to unify (more or less) the photography apps it was creating for both macOS and iOS.

In this book, Ill describe how to perform essential tasks with Photosin both macOS and iOS. Apple deploys some of the most powerful functionality it has developedincluding its iCloud servers and its machine-learning technologyin the service of making your photo library more accessible and discoverable.

My daughter, whose birth was the motivator for my very first digital-camera purchase, is about to graduate from high school. Her entire life has been chronicled with digital photostens of thousands of them at this point. That catalog, which spent time in several photography apps including iPhoto, now resides in my iCloud Photos, accessed via Photos on macOS and iOS. Photography is how we preserve the images of our lives; its important that we understand the software that allows us to organize, view, and share those images. Thats what youll learn with this book.

The version of the book you are reading has been updated to reflect the changes in Photos version 4.0, which was released along with macOS 10.13 Mojave and iOS 12 in September 2018. You can find an overview of the changes by reading .

Thanks for joining me on this journey. Lets get started!

This book explores Apples Photos app (in both macOS and iOS) by walking you through the most essential photo-management and editing tasks. You can read the chapters in any order. Click any link to jump to a topic.

• Discover what you have to look forward to with Photos in 10.14 Mojave and iOS 12 in .

• If youre just now switching to Photos from Apples venerable iPhoto app, you can get a rundown of the differences in .

• Photos for macOS and iOS can import files directly from your camera or memory card. Read .

• You can switch between libraries to keep collections separate. See .

• Apple includes machine-learning technology in Photos that allows the app to identify objects, animals, and faces. Read to take advantage of this exciting feature.

• Want to quickly round up all the photos of your kids taken with your DSLR within the last year? Take advantage of your valuable metadata in .

• Give photos a little extra pop in macOS or iOS by cropping, applying filters, and fixing red-eye and rotation problems. See .

• Learn how to by removing unwanted details and applying adjustments, as well as editing with external apps like Photoshop if you prefer.

• Remember Christmas 3 years ago? Photos does. Peruse Photos-generated collections of your photos, including a map of locations, associated people, and (in Photos for iOS) a customizable movie. Check out for much more.

• Get a handle on how Apple automatically identifies the people in your photos, as well as how to put names to faces in .

• Thanks to the cloud, you can access your entire Photos library from any device you own. But youll need to change the way you think about managing your photos to make it work. Read .

• Admire your favorite photos on your big-screen TV when you .

• Dont let your photos stay locked up on your Mac. Learn the easiest ways to with others using social media and more.

• If your desired method of sharing your photos involves getting them out of Photos, try .

• Turn a special events photos into a beautiful movie with its own soundtrack. See .

• For all the convenience of digital photos, theres still nothing quite like holding an image of loved ones in your hands. Discover how to use new third-party extension apps to design printed calendars and books. See .

In macOS Mojave and iOS 12, Photos has grown and changed. Here are the highlights of the biggest changes in the new versions of Photos.

Apple actually made some nice changes to Photos in iOS 12, revamping parts of its interface and upgrading search features:

• In iOS, Photos has gained the capability to search for multiple items at once, which makes it much easier to zero in on exactly the photo youre looking for. See .

• A new For You tab provides a single place to see recently shared photos, memories, effect suggestions, and more. See .

• The Import tab has been given a major update. See .

The Mac version of Photos didnt quite take macOS Mojave off, but its changes have been minimal:

• Keyboard shortcuts have been changed. See .

• Perhaps most notable are the features that have been removedthose for making calendars, books, and other printed materials. However, several companies have released extensions for Photos that offer comparable functionality. See .