Get to know Apple’s Photos app and how best to use it to import, manage, edit, sync, and share your photos in Ventura and iOS 16/iPadOS 16! As the successor to Apple’s iPhoto and Aperture apps, Photos has a more refined interface and deeper connections to iCloud, and it runs faster. Following the expert advice of Jason Snell, publisher of Six Colors and former lead editor at Macworld, you’ll learn how to navigate Photos like a pro!
Also available: A bundle of Take Control of Your Digital Photos and Take Control of Photos for just $20.
In this book, you’ll learn how to:
- Import photos from cameras, mobile devices, or memory cards
- Navigate the Photos interface, including the sidebar and icons
- View, edit, or disable Live Photos
- Organize your library by using enhanced search features, adding metadata, building albums, and creating smart albums
- Locate and remove duplicate photos
- Search for text, faces, and other objects in photos
- Edit your photos using quick fixes like cropping, applying filters, and fixing red-eye and rotation problems
- Use advanced editing techniques within Photos and edit using external apps like Photoshop
- Manage your photo collection using the Memories and People features, and get summary views
- Sync and share individual photos and videos with iCloud
- Use iCloud Shared Photos to share a separate library with up to five other people
- Work with multiple Photos libraries
- Show off your photos on an iPhone or iPad, including customizing your lock screen
- Use the Camera app in iOS/iPadOS to capture photos and videos
- View your photos on an Apple TV
- Share your photos via social media, export them out of Photos, or turn them into slideshows
- Create printed objects (such as books and calendars) from your photos using third-party services
Jason Snell has been writing about Apple since it was doomed—1994, to be exact—and was the lead editor for Macworld for more than a decade. He also oversaw editorial operations for PCWorld, TechHive, and Greenbot. He currently writes about technology at sixcolors.com, and hosts the Upgrade and Download podcasts at relay.fm, and produces and hosts many other podcasts at theincomparable.com.
What’s New in Version 3.1
Version 3.0 of this book inadvertently omitted coverage of an important new feature in Photos: duplicate detection. It’s now explained in “Manage Duplicates.”
What's New in the Third Edition
In macOS 13 Ventura, iOS 16, and iPadOS 16, Photos has grown and changed. As a result, I’ve updated and expanded this book. Along with many smaller changes, this edition adds the following:
- Coverage of shared photo libraries: Apple has introduced the capability to share a single library among up to six Apple IDs. There are a bunch of limitations and caveats, but it’s a great feature that solves the problem of families not being able to easily build a single reference point for all their photos. All the details are in “Use iCloud Shared Photos.”
- Explanation of live search in Photos: In 2021 Apple introduced Live Text, a feature that let you search for text that was visible in photos themselves. Unfortunately, that feature wasn’t available within the Photos app itself! Fortunately, things have changed. You can now search for text directly within your photos, as covered in “Search for Text in Images.”
- Expanded coverage of iPhone & iPad Photo Features: iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 include a bunch of new ways to display your photos on your iPhone, most notably on the new customizable lock screen. Those features are detailed in the chapter “Show off Photos in iOS and iPadOS.”
- Camera app instructions: There are a bunch of new options in the Camera app that are directly connected to Photos, so many that I’ve finally given in and written a new chapter, “Use the Camera App,” to give an overview of what’s in the iOS/iPadOS Camera app.
Clive Huggan (verified owner) –
Like all Jason Snell’s writings I’ve read over the years, Take Control of Photos is an expert, extremely comprehensive, thoughtfully written book. I frequently recommend it to colleagues, friends and user group members.
The only reservation I have with this particular book is that when I want information about Photos on the Mac, I have to be careful that I’m not reading about Photos on iOS; sometimes I have to look back a page or so to be sure. I’d have to say that I’d prefer a Mac part separate from an iOS part — which shouldn’t be much of a problem with an electronic book; there could be cross-platform links where the reader might want to go between Mac and iOS.
But that’s a minor quiblle; it’s a book that I heartily recommend!
Arlan Smith (verified owner) –
I agree, please keep the Mac and IOS parts completely separate in future versions. Otherwise, there is lots of good stuff here if you can just keep the separate operating system versions sorted.
Joe Kissell –
@Clive, @Arlan Thanks for your feedback. Unfortunately, there’s no practical way to keep the Mac stuff separate from the iOS/iPadOS stuff, because that would require massive amounts of duplicate text. It would make the book vastly longer and even more cumbersome to navigate. Sorry, we realize it’s not ideal either way, but our current approach is the lesser of two evils. —Joe