Photos, as you probably already know, is a program that you can use to store and edit your digital images and videos. But that just scratches the surface of what it can do. Perhaps most remarkably, Photos can keep your image library backed up and synchronized across all your Apple devices. That way your Mac, iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch all contain the same photos, videos, and albums, all the time, which is pretty darn amazing. And by using Photosâ shared albums, your family and friends can share photos from events as theyâre happening, and you can view them in a self-updating album on any device. Because your photos and videos are always available on all your devices, you can use Photosâ incredibly powerful editing tools anywhereâfor example, you could start editing on your iPhone, continue on your Mac, and then finish on your iPad.
Note
Technically speaking, Photos is a databaseâa special kind of program that tracks all the files you tell it about. Databases perform their tracking magic by creating a support fileâa library, in this caseâthat includes an individual record for each file you import. If thatâs clear as mud, consider another app that you (likely) interact with all the time: the Contacts app on your Mac or iOS device. The Contacts app is a database that points to a file containing an individual record for each person youâve told it about. A physical and somewhat vintage analogy is a Rolodex (database) and all the little cards (records) it contains.
Photos lets you view all kinds of info about each image file, including the camera settings you used when you took the shot (great for improving your photographic skills), as well as the date, time, and location (if your camera has that ability). You can add your own info to each file, too, such as whoâs in the picture, custom titles, and descriptive phrases that can help you find certain pictures more easily. Even the edits you perform in Photos get tucked into each fileâs record, so you can undo the edits whenever you want. And Photos isnât just for managing images and videos taken on digital cameras; it can easily manage pictures youâve scanned or had burned onto disc by your local camera store.
But Photos goes far beyond all that. For instance, once you identify a few faces in your photo library (youâll learn how in Chapter 4), the program begins finding and identifying them all on its own, so you can spend more time building creative projectsâslideshows, books, calendars, cardsâand less time digging through your library to find specific images. Photos helps you organize your digital memory collection in other ways, too. For example, it displays your images in chronological order and automatically creates albums that help you find certain files. such as the last ones you imported, ones youâve marked as favorites (Using Favorites), or videos. You can create your own albums, too, and then combine them into projects, convert and export them for use elsewhere, and easily share them with friends and family.
By embracing Photos, youâre getting in on the ground floor of something very special: the first complete photo and video organizer for a mobile lifestyleâwhether mobile for you means moving from the living room to the bedroom or jetting across the globe. This book is your trusty guide to this amazing new program.
Note
In the past, the word âprogramâ was used for software that ran on desktop and laptop computers, and the word âappâ was to describe software that ran on iOS devices (the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch). These days, Apple uses the word âappâ to describe all kinds of software, regardless of the device it runs on. This book uses both terms, but leans toward âapp.â Donât be confusedâwhen you see the term âappâ or âprogram,â it just means âsoftware.â
Apple knows there are precious few people who enjoy the time-consuming task of managing and processing photos, so theyâve tried to make it as painless as possible. Back in 2002, Apple introduced iPhoto, Photosâ predecessor, which enjoyed a long reign as the simplest image-organizing and -editing program available for the Mac. iPhoto introduced millions of people to the joys of image editing, and offered the more adventurous quite a lot of editing power and flexibility. The only problem with iPhoto enjoying such a long life is that it had a lot of outdated code under its hood, resulting in a program that crashed often and, if you had a big photo library, ran as slow as molasses. Therefore, in the summer of 2014, Apple announced that it would stop updating iPhoto and its pro-level sibling, Aperture, in favor of a fresh start with a new program: Photos.
Note
Just because Apple will no longer update iPhoto and Aperture doesnât mean you have to stop using them. As of this writing, both programs perform perfectly well in Yosemite 10.10.3, right alongside Photos.
Photos is a completely redesigned image organizer and editor that can do (nearly) everything iPhoto could, plus a whole lot more. Built especially for OS X Yosemite, Photos is smokinâ fast and has a wonderfully sleek design. Compared to iPhoto, it offers a more logical way of viewing your pictures based on date (instead of events), and easier ways of getting around within the program. Also, Photosâ editing tools are more powerful than iPhotoâs, and the program inherited many editing features that were found only in Aperture. You get a slew of fun filters for applying nifty color and film-grain effects, plus a simpler process of creating books, cards, slideshows, calendars, and prints. And, as in iPhoto, everything you do in Photos is 100% non-destructive, meaning you can undo your edits anytime you want.
Perhaps the most exciting news is that you can use Photos in conjunction with Appleâs iCloud storage service to sync your picture library to all your Apple devices, so you can have all your photos with you all the time. Thatâs right: You can avoid the sinking feeling you get when you want to show a photo to someone, but you canât remember where the heck that picture lives. Alas, this syncing service isnât free, but itâs affordableâand the peace of mind you get from knowing your files are backed up is worth the small fee. But you donât have to use it.
Like iPhoto, Photos is built to handle the needs of the massesâitâs not designed for professional photographers. So if you need the ability to edit certain parts of a photo, fix perspective or lens-distortion problems, and the like, then you need a pro-level image organizer and editor such as Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.
Tip
If you want to remove your ex from a vacation picture, combine images, push photos through text, or draw and paint from scratch, you need the advanced editing power found in programs such as Pixelmator, Adobe Photoshop Elements, or the 10-ton gorilla of photo editing, Photoshop. Conveniently, your humble author has written a book about it: Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual, available from www.missingmanuals.com. (For other books and videos by your author, visit www.PhotoLesa.com.)
As mentioned earlier, Photos can do most everything that iPhoto could, save for the exceptions mentioned in the box on Photos vs. iPhoto. If youâre a seasoned iPhoto user or youâve used the Photos app on your iOS device (iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch), then youâll feel right at home in Photos on your Mac. Hereâs a rundown of what you can expect to accomplish with Photos:
Import images. Photos can import pictures and video from just about anywhere, be it a camera or memory card that you plug into your Mac or an iOS device. If youâve got an iCloud account that you sync pictures with, you can import from there, too. Photos understands almost any image format, including the raw format captured by most cameras (Fun with File Formats).
View your snapshots. Photos logically organizes your pictures and videos by years, collections, and moments. In Years view, you see teeny-tiny thumbnails of your pictures based on the years they were taken, which you can scroll through at high velocity. To see one of your shots at a larger size, just click and hold its thumbnail. To drill deeper into your photo library, click within any year and you open Collections view, which shows pictures taken at the same place within a certain time periodâduring a recent trip to New York, say. This view is similar to iPhotoâs Events. Click inside a Collection and you open Moments view, which displays pictures taken within a shorter time periodâyour big night out on Broadway, perhaps. If your camera captures location info (as iOS devices do), you can also view your thumbnails plotted on a map. The programâs Info panel shows when you took each photo and what camera settings you used. Photos for Mac lets you maximize your screen real estate, tooâits Full Screen view makes your pictures feel practically life-sized.
Organize your collection. You can manually arrange pictures into albums that you create, though Photos includes several built-in albums such as All Photos, Faces, Last Import, Favorites, and Videos. If youâre lucky enough to have a newer iOS device that has a camera with the nifty Panorama, Slo-mo, Time-lapse, and Burst features, you automatically get albums for that stuff, too. Photos also has a powerful (and trainable) facial-recognition feature, as well as smart albums, which self-populate based on criteria that you set. You can mark your best pictures with a Favorites tag, making them easier to find later on, and also create and assign keywords, which let you find groups of photos based on similar content (such as flowers, food, or Fido).
Find pics quickly. Photos includes a powerful search field that lets you easily locate photos based on any text associated with them, such as a filename, keyword(s), a face youâve named, a description youâve added, or where you took them. This field also lets you locate photos taken during a certain time period or on a specific date.
Sync and share images. Appleâs iCloud Photo Library lets you sync all your pictures across all your Apple devices, and ensures that full-size versions of everything in your library are safely backed up onto Appleâs servers. This service is insanely convenient, though as Meet the iCloud Photo Library explains, you do have to pay for it. You can also use iCloud to create shared albums (which are great for sharing photos with far-flung friends or relatives) and you can easily upload pictures to social media sites such as Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter. Emailing pictures from Photos is a breeze, as is sending them to others via text message. You can also transfer pictures onto other Apple devices using AirDrop.
Edit your pictures. Photos offers editing tools for every skill level. You can use its one-click options to easily enhance, rotate, crop, straighten, and flip your images horizontally or vertically, and to apply a plethora of filters to give your shots creative color treatments. In Adjust mode, youâll find powerful and innovative preview-based controls for adjusting lighting (exposure, highlights, shadows, brightness, contrast, and so on), and color (saturation, contrast, and cast), among other things. You can reveal additional controls for things like sharpening, adding definition, reducing noise, and adding an edge vignette. Photos also lets you zap blemishes, scratches, and stray hairs with the Retouch tool, and even conquer pesky red-eye. Once youâve corrected one picture, you can easily copy and paste those edits onto another image. And itâs super simple to duplicate a photo if you want versions with different effects (say, a full-color version and a black and white).
Make slideshows and movies. You can create instant and saved slideshows using Photosâ beautiful built-in themes, which come complete with background music. When you craft a saved slideshow, you can add text to any slide you want (a feature that even iPhoto didnât have). You can also customize elements such as transitions, slide duration, and whether the slideshow loops. Photos also lets you view and edit any movies youâve importedâyou can trim clips, adjust the timing of slow-motion videos, select a preview frame, and export frames as pictures. And when youâre done creating your slideshow or movie masterpiece, you can easily export it to share with others and send it over to iTunes for syncing with your iOS devices.
Print your images. Photos lets you print pictures in a variety of sizes on your own printer or order pro-level prints from Apple. Either way, Photos handles all of the resizing so you donât have to worry about it. And if you print on your own printer, you can easily gang multiple pictures onto a single page.
Create books, calendars, and cards. Photos includes several themes you can use to create some of the worldâs most beautiful photo books, calendars, and greeting cards (of both the folded and postcard variety). The programâs easy-to-use design controls let you make every page of every project look just the way you want. After that, you can upload the whole kit-and-caboodle to Apple so they can professionally print it, and then ship it to you or your lucky recipient.
To keep things simple, Apple designed Photos for the Mac to be virtually identical to Photos for iOS (that is, the version for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch). In Photos for iOS, you can view, tag, edit, and share your pictures just like you can in Photos for Mac. That said, you need your Macâand a much bigger screen than any iOS device hasâto build projects such as slideshows, books, calendars, and cards, and to order prints.
There are slight differences between the two programs, and theyâll be duly noted in this book when they occur. The most obvious difference is that, rather than clicking things like you do on a Mac, you tap them on your touchscreen. So if youâre reading this book while working with an iOS device, whenever you see the word âclick,â think âtapâ instead. Also, you get fewer editing tools in Photos for iOS than in Photos for Mac. But for the most part, mastering one version of the program means youâve also mastered the other, which is convenient.
Throughout this book, and throughout the Missing Manual series, youâll find sentences like this one: âOpen your User folderâPicturesâPhotos Library.â Thatâs shorthand for a much longer set of instructions that direct you to open three nested items in sequence. Those instructions might read: âOn your hard drive, youâll find a folder called Casey (or whatever your user folder is named). Open it. Now locate the Pictures folder and open it, too. Inside it youâll spot a file called âPhotos Library.â
Similarly, this kind of arrow shorthand helps to simplify the business of choosing commands in menus. The instruction âChoose FileâExportâExport Slideshowâ means, âIn Photos, open the File menu at the top of your screen, and then choose the Export command. In the hierarchical menu that appears, choose Export Slideshow.â
As the owner of a Missing Manual, youâve got more than just a book to read. At the Missing Manuals website, youâll find tips, articles, and other useful info. You can also communicate with the Missing Manual team and tell us what you love (or hate) about this book. Head over to www.missingmanuals.com, or go directly to one of the following sections.
This book doesnât have a physical CD pasted inside the back cover, but youâre not missing out on anything. Go to www.missingmanuals.com/cds to find a list of all the shareware and websites mentioned in this book, as well as Appendix C.
If you register this book at oreilly.com, youâll be eligible for special offersâlike discounts on future editions. Registering takes only a few clicks. Type http://www.oreilly.com/register into your browser to hop directly to the registration page.
Got questions? Need more info? Fancy yourself a book reviewer? On our Feedback page, you can get expert answers to questions that come to you while reading, share your thoughts on this Missing Manual, and find groups for folks who share your interest in iPhoto. To have your say, go to www.missingmanuals.com/feedback.
In an effort to keep this book as up to date and accurate as possible, each time we print more copies, weâll make any confirmed corrections youâve suggested. We also note such changes on the bookâs website, so you can mark important corrections in your own copy of the book, if you like. Go to http://bit.ly/Photos-Mac-iOS_TMM to report an error and view existing corrections.
Youâll find very little jargon or nerd terminology in this book. You will, however, encounter a few terms and concepts that youâll see frequently in your Mac life. Here are the essentials:
Clicking. To click means to point the arrow cursor at something onscreen and thenâwithout moving the cursor at allâpress and release the clicker button on the mouse or trackpad. To double-click, of course, means to click twice in rapid succession, again without moving the cursor. And to drag means to move the cursor while keeping the button continuously pressed.
When youâre told to â-click something, you click while pressing the â key (itâs next to the space bar). Shift-clicking, Option-clicking, and Control-clicking work the same wayâjust click while pressing the corresponding key on your keyboard. (On non-U.S. Mac keyboards, the Option key may be labeled âAltâ instead, and the â key may have a Windows logo on it.)
Note
New Macs come with Appleâs Magic Mouse, a mouse that looks like it has only one button, but can actually detect which side of its rounded front youâre pressing. If youâve turned on the feature in System Preferences, then you can right-click things on the screen by clicking the right side of the mouse or by clicking with two fingers instead of one. Doing so typically produces a shortcut menu of useful commands.
All through this book, youâll see phrases such as, âControl-click the photo.â Thatâs telling you that Control-clicking will do the jobâbut if youâve got a two-button mouse or youâve turned on the two-button feature of the Magic Mouse, right-clicking might be more efficient.
Keyboard shortcuts. Every time you take your hand off the keyboard to move the mouse, you lose time and potentially disrupt your creative flow. Thatâs why many experienced Mac fans use keystroke combinations instead of menu commands wherever possible. â-P opens the Print dialog box, for example, and â-M minimizes the current window to the Dock.
When you see a shortcut like â-Q (which quits the current program), itâs telling you to hold down the â key, and, while itâs down, type the letter Q, and then release both keys. And if you forget a keyboard shortcut, donât panic. Just look at the menu item and youâll see its keyboard shortcut listed to its right. (To see a list of all the keyboard shortcuts in Photos for Mac, choose HelpâKeyboard Shortcuts.)
Gesturing. On an iOS device, you do everything on the touchscreen instead of with a mouse and keyboard. The same is true if you use a trackpad connected to your Mac (either the built-in version you get with a laptop or the wireless, Magic Trackpad). Youâll do a lot of tapping of onscreen buttons on an iOS device, though youâll also navigate by swiping your finger across the screen (say, to move from one image to another, and so on). Dragging is also a factor, which you do by sliding your finger across the glass or trackpad in any directionâlike a flick (described next), but slower and more controlled. A flick is a faster, less-controlled slide. For example, you flick vertically to scroll through lists of thumbnails, which is a lot of funâthe faster you flick, the faster you scroll up or down. Scrolling lists have a real-world sort of momentum, so they slow down after a second or two, so you can see where you wound up. Last but not least, you can zoom in on a photo by spreadingâthatâs when you place two fingers (usually thumb and forefinger) on the glass and spread them. The picture magically expands as though itâs made of rubber. Once youâve zoomed in like this, you can zoom out again by putting two fingers on the glass or trackpad and pinching them together. To see a quick, animated demo of common gestures, choose
âSystem PreferencesâMouse or Trackpad. You can also learn more about gestures by visiting https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT4721.
If youâve mastered this much information, you have all the technical background you need to enjoy Photos for Mac and iOS: The Missing Manual.
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