Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, El Capitan Edition

Photos

Photos is meant to look, feel, and work exactly like Photos on the iPhone/iPad. For example, Photos automatically groups your photos into sets that are easy to navigate (Figure 19-34).

The Time Groupings

Here they are, from smallest to largest:

• Moments. A moment is a group of photos you took in one place at one time—for example, all the shots at the picnic by the lake. The app even uses GPS data to give each moment a name: “San Francisco, California (Union Square),” for example. If you tap a Moment’s name, a map opens up; little photo thumbnails show exactly where these pictures were taken.

  GEM IN THE ROUGH: De-Mirrorizing Your Photos

  Technically, Photo Booth acts like a mirror, not a camera. That is, every picture you take is actually flipped, left-to-right. If there’s ever text in the picture—something written on your T-shirt, for example—or if you ever examine the way your hair is parted, you’ll realize that every image is backward.

  That’s why you can click a thumbnail at the bottom of the window and then choose Edit→Flip Photo (⌘-F). You’ve just made the photo match what a camera would have seen.

  Or choose Edit→Auto Flip New Photos if you want Photo Booth to do the flipping for you from now on.

  Tip

  The slider at top left controls the size of the thumbnails.

• Collections. Put a bunch of moments together, and what do you get? A collection. Here again, the app tries to study the times and places of your photo taking—but this time, it puts them into groups that might span a few days ...