While most of your photos are probably on your iPhone thanks to the built-in Photos app, what about the images that you have on your favorite Mac? We're talking about your stunning photos taken with your DSLR of choice, a point-and-shoot camera, or just images that you've collected from all over the internet? How are you supposed to get those pictures on your Mac to your iPhone or iPad?

The easiest solution is probably to use the iCloud Photo Library because all of your photos, whether from your iPhone 13 Pro, iPad, or Mac, get synced in full resolution across all of your devices. But of course, this requires enough space for your entire photo library, which means you need a paid iCloud storage tier. Thankfully, there are other ways to transfer photos from your Mac to your iPhone, so don't sweat it — we'll show you all you need to know. And we also have a guide on how to transfer photos from your iPhone to your Mac instead, if you need that too.

What content can I view on my iPhone or iPad?

The Photos app on iPhone and iPad can display several different types of file formats without issue. These will all appear fine in the Photos app, but you won't be able to tell what format they are on the surface — it will all appear rather seamless.

• JPEG
• PNG
• TIFF
• RAW
• HEIF (these are HEIC images and is what your iPhone saves natively if High Efficiency is turned on)
• Live Photos
• GIF (these only animate in the Photos app on iOS 11 or later or macOS High Sierra or later)
• MP4 video
• HEVC video (similar to HEIC, it is the High-Efficiency video format)
• Slo-mo video
• Time-lapse video

As long as your photo or video is in one of these formats, it will show up fine in the iOS Photos app once you transfer photos from your Mac to your iPhone. Otherwise, you'll want to consider using the iOS Files app.

How to use iCloud Photo Library

iCloud Photo Library is probably the easiest way to keep your photos on Mac and iPhone in sync, but you do need a newer Mac that can get the Photos app on it (macOS Yosemite and later). Here's how to enable the iCloud Photo Library.

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Click Photos in the top left of the menu bar and select Preferences (or click the Command and , keys on the keyboard).
3. Click the iCloud tab.
4. Make sure that the iCloud Photos option is checked.

If this is the first time you are launching Photos on Mac in macOS Catalina or later, you may need to make sure that the System Photo Library is on before you can enable the iCloud Photos option.

1. In the Preferences for Photos app, click General.

2. Click Use as System Photo Library. It may take a little bit of time to complete.

When you have the iCloud Photos option enabled on your Mac, you will want to ensure that it's also enabled on your iPhone or iPad.

1. Launch Settings on your iPhone.
2. Scroll down and tap on Photos.

3. Tap the toggle for iCloud Photos to ON (green).
4. You can also turn the toggle for Shared Albums to ON (green) if you want to share your iCloud Photos albums with others.

Once iCloud Photos is enabled, it may take up to 24 hours before all of your content is synced up between devices. iCloud Photos also won't sync unless you're on WiFi, so make sure that's good to go before wondering where all of your content is.

Upload photos from iCloud.com

If you don't want to deal with iCloud Photos (it does come with some headaches), you can actually use the good old-fashioned method of uploading to the web. That's right — iCloud Photos can be accessed from the web, and it's another way to transfer photos from Mac to iPhone, or any platform, really.

1. Make sure that you have iCloud Photos enabled on your iOS devices.
2. Visit icloud.com and sign in to your Apple ID.
3. Click the Photos icon.

4. After everything loads up, click the Upload button (it looks like an up arrow to a cloud icon).

5. Choose the images from your hard drive that you want to upload.
6. Click Choose.

Your images will then get uploaded to iCloud Photos manually. A progress bar at the bottom of the screen lets you know how the uploads are going, and you can click Stop Upload at any time if you change your mind.

Sync via iTunes or Finder

For those who don't want to use iCloud Photos, you can do the good ol' syncing method with the computer itself. You know, with a — * le gasp* — cable.

If you are using macOS Mojave or earlier, then you will do this with iTunes. But if you are on macOS Catalina and later, you do this through the Finder, since Apple split iTunes up into separate Music, TV, and Podcasts apps.

The reason you may want to sync with your Mac with a cable is that because you may be running an older version of iPhoto or Aperture, you may have certain albums in Photos, or you have specific folders or albums of images in your Pictures folder. Therefore, it's important that before you manually sync through iTunes or Finder, you have all of your images that you want to transfer from Mac to iPhone organized appropriately.

1. Ensure your photos are organized the way you want them to be organized.
2. Plug in your iPhone or iPad to your Mac.
3. Launch Finder (iTunes in macOS Mojave and earlier) if it doesn't open automatically.
4. Click on your iOS device icon in the device list.

5. Click the Photos tab.

6. Click the checkbox next to Sync Photos.

7. Click the source of the photos that you want to sync from in the drop-down menu.
8. Click the checkbox next to the option you want: Sync All Folders or Sync Selected Folders.

9. Choose the Folders that you want to sync from your chosen source.
10. Click the checkbox next to Include videos if you want.
11. Click Sync in the bottom right corner to begin syncing.

Use AirDrop to transfer photos from Mac to iPhone

One of the easiest ways to transfer photos from Mac to iPhone is with AirDrop. Apple introduced AirDrop back in OS X Lion (10.7), so your Mac should work with AirDrop, even if it's a little older (Lion works on Macs from 2008).

AirDrop uses Bluetooth Low Energy to broadcast, discover, and negotiate connections, allowing point-to-point Wi-Fi for transferring data. Between Macs and iPhones, and iPads, this is a quick and easy way to transfer files, such as photos and videos.

1. Launch Finder on your Mac.
2. Open a new Finder window or tab so that you can view two Finder locations at once.
3. Locate and select the photos and video that you want to transfer to your iPhone or iPad.
4. In the other Finder window or tab, click AirDrop from the side menu.

5. On your iPhone or iPad, make sure that it is unlocked and awake.
6. Make sure that your iPhone or iPad has AirDrop receiving enabled and set to Everyone.
7. Drag your selected photos and video to the iPhone or iPad option in the AirDrop Finder window.

8. If your iPhone or iPad prompts you, tap Accept.

While AirDrop is excellent, it works best for smaller batches of photos and video rather than your entire photo library. If you want to transfer your entire library, it's best to use iCloud Photos or sync via Finder or iTunes.

Utilize a third-party syncing service

Another great option to consider when you need to transfer photos from Mac to iPhone is to use a third-party syncing service, like Dropbox. For example, you could upload your pictures to your Dropbox account directly on the web or add photos to your Dropbox folder once you install Dropbox on your Mac. Dropbox has an excellent walkthrough to help you get started if you're a newbie to the service. Then on your iPhone or iPad, download the Dropbox app and access your photos and videos directly.

While I prefer to use Dropbox for my photos, there are also other options that you can use, such as Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Amazon Drive, and more. It just comes down to personal preference here.

Take your photos with you everywhere

We all have a lot of photos that we take and they're probably on our Macs right now. Once we're done editing them, we may want to just have them on our best iPhone to show them off. Thankfully, there are a few ways to get our favorite photos from our Mac to our iPhone, as we just showed you here.

And if you need to do the reverse, which is getting your photos from your iPhone to your Mac, the process is pretty easy and straightforward too. Apple has made it convenient, and you can also use your preferred cloud syncing service of choice too.

Updated August 2022: These are still the current steps for transferring photos from your Mac to your iPhone and iPad.

If you have an iPhone, then you probably use it a lot for taking photos. After all, no matter which model you have, the iPhone always has a pretty great camera, and it's always there for those spontaneous moments. Over time, this means you have a lot of photos. But what if you want to edit a bunch of them on your Mac, rather than your iPhone or iPad, so that they look the absolute best they can? You need to get them over from your iPhone to your Mac somehow. Fortunately, there are a few ways to go about this.

Whether you're using the iPhone SE or the iPhone 13 Pro, here's how to transfer photos from your favorite iPhone right to your best Mac.

Use iCloud Photo Library

One of the easiest methods to transfer photos from your iPhone to your Mac, with no cables required, is to turn on iCloud Photos. When this is enabled, you should be able to access all of the photos and videos that you have across all of your devices — including the best iPad, iPhone, and Mac.

However, you will need to have enough storage space in your iCloud account, which you may not have. Apple provides 5GB of free space for every iCloud account, which is like nothing these days. If you want to use iCloud Photos, you may need to consider which iCloud storage plan you should get, which start at $0.99 a month for 50GB, $2.99 for 200GB, or you can get 2TB for $9.99 a month. There are also Apple One bundles, which get you iCloud storage on top of other Apple services like Apple Arcade, Apple News+, Apple Fitness, and more.

The 2TB option can also be shared with up to six others through Family Sharing. For most individuals, the 200GB should suffice. However, you should keep in mind that this iCloud storage is not just for iCloud Photos — it's for everything you store in iCloud, including iCloud backups, which can take up quite a bit of space.

To use iCloud Photos for importing your photos over to your Mac from your iPhone, you'll first need to make sure that all of your devices have iCloud Photos enabled.

1. Launch Settings on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Scroll down and tap on Photos.
3. Tap the toggle for iCloud Photos to ON (green).

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Click Photos in the upper left corner of the menu bar.
3. Click Preferences (you can also easily access the Preferences by pressing cmd and , on your keyboard).
4. Click on the iCloud tab.
5. Click the checkbox on iCloud Photos to turn it on.

Once iCloud Photos is enabled on all of the devices you want to use it on, your images should sync automatically across everything. However, it may take up to 24 hours after turning it on for everything to get synced over, so you'll have to be patient. After that, though, everything should be rather seamless when it comes down to how to transfer photos from your iPhone to your Mac.

Import via the Photos app on Mac

If you use the Photos app on your Mac to manage your photos and edit them, but you don't want to use iCloud Photos, then you'll need to manually plug your phone in and import it the old fashioned way. Here's how.

1. Connect your iPhone or iPad to your Mac via a USB cable.
2. Open the Photos app on your Mac.
3. The Photos app should automatically be on the Import screen with all photos and videos on the connected device. If not, just click on the device name in the sidebar.
4. Select the photos you want to import.
5. Click Import Selected. If you did not select photos, click Import All New Photos.

6. Photos app will begin the process. Once it's completed, you can disconnect your iPhone or iPad from your Mac.

Before iCloud Photos was a thing, this was probably the best and most straightforward way on how to transfer photos from your iPhone to your Mac.

Transfer the photos with AirDrop

Don't use the Photos app on Mac? No problem. Another quick way on how to transfer photos from your iPhone to your Mac is to utilize AirDrop. With AirDrop, you're using Bluetooth Low Energy to basically create a point-to-point WiFi network that can transfer data between two Apple devices, such as an iPhone and a Mac, an iPhone to another iPhone, an iPhone to an iPad — you get the idea. AirDrop is fast, power-efficient, and secure.

It's also incredibly easy to use!

1. Launch Photos on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Find the photos and videos that you want to send to your Mac. You can do it for individual images or a batch of multiple photos.
3. Tap the Share button in the bottom right corner.

4. Tap AirDrop.
5. Select the Mac device that you want to send the images to.

6. On your Mac, the AirDropped image should appear in a Finder window.

If you use AirDrop enough, it will begin to show up as the first choice in the top row of sharing options. You can just tap it to send to your most frequently AirDropped device, which may be your Mac.

I honestly use AirDrop every day to complete work here at iMore. It's the fastest way to for me to get iPhone and iPad screenshots, product review photos, and more, without having to deal with iCloud Photos or the Photos app on Mac.

Utilize the Files app

If you want to transfer photos from your iPhone to your Mac, but don't want to use iCloud Photos and Photos on Mac, then you could use the Files app instead. Importing a file into the Files app on your iPhone means you can access that photo or video file from your Mac via iCloud Drive, or even another third-party syncing service, such as Dropbox or Google Drive.

If you prefer to use a third-party service, such as Dropbox, you'll need to turn that on first.

1. Launch the Files app on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Tap on the Browse tab.
3. Tap the "..." button in the upper right corner.

4. Tap Edit.
5. Under Locations, tap the toggle for the third-party service or app you want to enable.
6. Tap Done.

Now that your service or app is enabled in the Files app, you should be able to browse all of your stored files directly, without having to use a separate app.

Of course, third-party services like Dropbox also have standalone apps that can handle your Camera Roll uploads automatically as well.

1. Launch Photos on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Find the photos and videos that you want to send to Files.
3. Tap the Share button.

4. Scroll down and tap Save to Files.
5. If you have multiple locations saved, choose the location you want to save to.
6. Tap Save.

Once you have imported your photos and video to the Files app in your specified location, it should be easy to find them on your Mac.

1. Launch Finder on your Mac.
2. Click iCloud Drive in the sidebar. If you chose a different location, like Dropbox, click Dropbox in the sidebar.

3. Your photo or video should be there. It may be easier to sort by Date Added or Date Modified if you have a lot of files.

Send 'em to your Mac right from your iPhone!

While you may use your iPhone for all of your photo-taking needs, getting them on your Mac may not be so obvious. But now that we've shown you all of the different ways that you can accomplish this, it's pretty easy! Plus, there are some amazing photo editors on the Mac that help you achieve the perfect photo. And don't forget, you can transfer photos from your Mac to your iPhone as well, you know, so you can post those edited photos on Instagram.

Updated March 2022: These are still the best ways to transfer photos from your iPhone to your Mac.

Family Sharing is one of the best Apple iCloud services for family groups. It allows you to share storage space, purchase accounts, subscriptions, Apple Music plans, Apple Arcade and much more between multiple iCloud users. This includes managed accounts for young children. 

Besides all those benefits, Family Sharing also integrates with Shared Albums -- a free feature that provides your family with a secure shared album so you can easily share images and videos in one place. Each family member in your circle has their own separate iCloud Photo Library but they can choose to send media to the Family album, providing everyone with a communal space. It's perfect if you want to share your latest vacation snaps or photos of the kids with everyone in a secure environment.

Here's how to use iCloud Photo Sharing alongside Family Sharing. Once it's set up, you can easily access the Family album on your shiny new iPhone 14 Pro, one of the best iPads, or the latest MacBook Air M2, and everything in between.

Note: Before following these steps, make sure you've enabled iCloud Shared Albums. It's not possible to use the Family album unless it's switched on. There's no need to use iCloud Photo Library to enable sharing if you prefer another syncing alternative.

How to view the Family album on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac

If you want to see which of your family members have already added to the album, you'll need to open the Shared section of your Photos app. That's also how you view the Family album. Here's what to do.

1. Open the Photos app on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Tap on the Albums tab.
3. After scrolling down to Shared Albums, tap the Family album. (If you can't see the album, tap See All and browse through the shared albums until you find it.)

1. Open Photos on your Mac.
2. Look under the Shared section of the Sidebar, and click Shared Albums.
3. Click the Family album.

How to add new photos or video to the Family album on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac

Adding new photos to the Family Album is pretty much as easy as adding photos or videos to any other album. If you're not sure though, here's what to do.

1. Tap the Photos app on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Tap the Albums tab at the bottom of the screen.
3. After scrolling down to the Shared Albums section, tap the Family album. (If you can't see it, tap See All and browse through the shared albums until you find it.)

4. Tap the plus sign.
5. Tap the photo or photos you want to share, then tap Done in the upper right corner.
6. Type a description if you'd like to add some context, then tap Post in the pop-up window.

1. Open Photos on your Mac.
2. Click on the photos you want to share with your family members (shift-click or command-click to select multiple).
3. Click the share button on the upper right of the window. It's a box with an upward arrow.
4. Click on Shared Albums to find the right album.
5. Click Family. The images will then sync over to your family member's device near instantly, depending on everyone's internet connection.

How to remove photos or video from the Family album on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac

If you want to remove any photos or videos from the Family album, you're only a couple of clicks or taps away. All members of the group can delete content they don't want to share any more. Here's how to do so.

1. Open the Photos app on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Tap the Albums tab to find the album.
3. Scroll down to Shared Albums and tap the Family album. (If you can't see it, tap on See All and browse through the shared albums until you find it.)

4. Tap Select in the upper right corner.
5. Tap the photo or video you wish to delete from the shared album. It won't remove it from your device -- only the shared album.

6. Tap the Trash icon in the bottom right corner of the screen.
7. Tap Delete Photos to confirm that you definitely want to delete the selected photos.

1. Open the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Click on Shared Albums in the sidebar of the app.
3. Click the Family album.
4. Select the images you want to delete from the shared album.

5. Tap the Delete key on your keyboard.
6. Click Delete on screen to confirm that you want to remove the photo from the shared album. Again, this will only remove the image from the shared album, not the original on your device.

Share your favorite memories with Family Sharing

It's simple to use Family Sharing and iCloud to share your favorite moments and memories with your loved ones. More convenient than trying to set up a private Facebook or Instagram account (and liaising with who shares what), you get all the benefits of the security that iCloud brings with an effort-free experience for all. 

Providing everyone in your family group knows how to use their Apple devices (and why wouldn't they?), Family Sharing means they can figure things out just as easily as if they were saving to their regular Camera Roll.

You also get the benefits of receiving a notification any time someone shares a new photo or video, which can make updates fairly exciting when there's lots going on in your circle.

When you use your digital camera to take amazing photos, you're going to want to import those photos onto your Mac to edit, share, and store them. You can even set up the Photos app on Mac to import photos automatically from that specific device. In macOS Monterey, you can also select which album you want those photos to go to. If you're trying to import a bunch of pictures from a specific event, you can also create a brand new folder and move them directly to it for better organization.

Here's everything you need to know about how to import photos from your best digital camera to your Mac.

How to select a folder to add new photos from your digital camera in the Photos app on Mac

In macOS Monterey, after you prepare your digital camera to import to the Photos app, here's how to select a specific folder to relocate to.

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac if it doesn't open automatically.
2. Click on your digital camera from the sidebar if it isn't already selected.

3. Select the photos you want to import to a specific folder.
4. Click on Library at the top of the Photos app window.
5. Select the folder you want to import the selected pictures directly to.

The pictures will be imported directly to the folder you selected. If you want to import multiple photos to different folders, follow the steps above and select which photos you want to import to each folder until you've imported them all.

How to create a new folder to import photos from your camera to Mac with the Photos app

If you're just about to dump all of your vacation photos into the Photos app on your Mac but haven't created a dedicated folder for it yet, no problem; you can do so right before importing.

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac if it doesn't open automatically.
2. Click on your digital camera from the sidebar if it isn't already selected.

3. Select the photos you want to import to the newly created folder.
4. Click on Library at the top of the Photos app window.
5. Click on New Album.

6. Enter an album name.
7. Click on OK.

The pictures will be imported directly to the folder you created. If you want to import multiple photos to different folders, follow the steps above and create new folders for each until you've imported them all.

How to find the photos you've just added to a folder in the Photos app on Mac

After you've created or selected a specific folder to import your photos to, you can find them under My Albums.

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Click on My Albums in the sidebar.
3. Double-click on the Album.

There they are!

Where your pictures go if you don't select a specific folder to import photos from your camera to Mac with the Photos app

If you don't select a folder to import your photos to, you can still find them easily. They will always be delivered to your Photos library (it's the one right at the top of the sidebar) whether you send them to a specific folder or not. You can also find them in your Imports section, where you will find all of the photos that you have imported from your camera to Mac (unless you've deleted them).

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Click on Imports.

You can filter your imported content by favorited, edited, only photos, only videos, or keyword (if you've tagged your photos).

Click on Showing in the upper left and select a filter.

Transfer those photos to your iPhone

Now that you know how to import photos to the location you what, learning how to transfer photos from your Mac to your iPhone is an excellent way to post your favorite shots to your social media accounts. Happy shooting!

Updated March 2022: Updated for the latest version of macOS Monterey.

No matter who you are, everyone loves to take pictures. These photos are memories that we want to preserve for a lifetime, or they can even be artistic ways that we express ourselves and want to show off around the home. This is why we like to get photos printed out, turned into books, turned into cards for special occasions, or even put them on mugs and other accessories.

Apple used to offer their own in-house photo printing service with its Photos app, but that was discontinued sometime in 2018. While Photos for Mac still has the option to get photo prints, it must be done through a third-party extension that you can get in the Mac App Store.

• How to set up and start using Photos on your Mac

Let's go through the new way of getting photos printed on your Mac.

• How to install a Photo Extension for Photos on Mac
• How to use a Photo Extension to print photos from Mac
• My personal method for photo printing from my Mac

How to install a Photo Extension for Photos on Mac

1. Launch Photos on your Mac.
2. Select one or more photos that you want to print.

3. Click File in the menu bar, or right click to bring up a menu.
4. Hover over Create, then select what you want to print.
   • Options include: Book, Calendar, Card, Wall Decor, Prints, Slideshow, and Other.
5. Click App Store to go straight to available apps that offer Photo Extensions.

6. Click Get on an app to download it.

You are able to download as many apps as you want or need and use the extension with Photos. These apps will simply appear in the list of apps available when you select the Create option next time.

How to use a Photos Extension to print photos from Mac

Once you have some apps installed that support Photos Extensions, it's easy to use them.

1. Launch Photos on your Mac.
2. Select one or more photos that you want to print.

3. Click File in the menu bar, or right click on the selected photo to bring up the menu.
4. Hover the cursor over Create, then select what you want to print.
5. Click the app you want to use.

6. Follow the on-screen instructions for that particular app to complete your photo print.

You can also click on the App Store option from the Create menu to once again bring up the section in the App Store with available Photo Extensions apps if you want to try out more.

My personal method for photo printing from my Mac

I take a lot of photos with my iPhones. Whenever I'm out and about, I end up taking photos whenever I can if it's something interesting, or just those moments with friends and family that I want to remember. I usually just use those photos in my Day One journal entries, but sometimes there are significant life events that deserve something more. Here's how I get my important photos printed from my Mac.

Currently, I use a combination of Dropbox and iCloud Photo Stream for keeping backups of my iPhone photos on my Macs.

I like Photo Stream because it's automatic and fairly seamless, and I use this over iCloud Photos because I still have albums on my iPhone that were synced from my Mac, and I don't want to remove those. Photo Stream lets me access my photos from the last 30 days, which is fine for me.

My permanent photo backup solution, which I use as a failsafe in case something goes wrong with Photo Stream, is Dropbox. Sometimes I end up forgetting to upload my photos for a few days, but I try to launch Dropbox at least once a day so my photos automatically upload to my 2TB Dropbox Plus account. I have years of photos in my Dropbox, so I can always browse it for what I need.

For my wedding last year, I was given digital copies through Google Drive. I saved all of the photos to my hard drive, and then uploaded them into Dropbox in appropriately labeled folders.

When I need to get these photos into Photos on Mac, I simply import them from their source folder.

• How to import images and folders into Photos

As I said, I have a ton of photos. When they end up in Photos on Mac, it's kind of a big mess. I'll have to go through each Day to see what happened or go through a ton of photos in a folder, which I may not want all of them printed.

When I go through my pictures in Photos, I think about what I want to be printed. Whether it's just prints, or a photo book, or something I want to send my mom for the holidays, I think the photos I choose should tell a kind of story. Or just look good. I mean, why else would anyone want to print out photos?

To make it easier, I select the photos I want to print and create a new album for them. I label this album with what I want to do, such as "Wedding Book," "Family Prints," "Christmas Cards," etc. That way, these photos are already set aside, and I can quickly select them for printing.

For my wedding, I wanted to have my favorite wedding photos arranged in a book to tell the story. While there are plenty of photo printing services out there, for this I chose to use Motif.

With Motif, it's easy to make a photo book in minutes. Just select your photos, then choose the size and format (hardcover or softcover) of your book. Then Motif loads up your photos in print-ready resolution, and you're off! As you pick a theme, it will give you some sample pages underneath the theme selector. If you want to go the easy route, just select Autoflow Book. With Autoflow, Motif goes through and picks out your best images and removes duplicates. You can always go back and add more photos, reduce the number of pages, and Motif will do all the heavy lifting for you.

If you want to have complete control, select Don't Autoflow. You'll then be able to design each page by choosing what photos should be shown, and you can add text to tell your story. Each page's layout can be changed if you aren't satisfied with it, you can add text along the bottom, or increase the size of a photo space if needed.

Personally, I like to put my photos in my book in chronological order. This way, it tells the story I want it to tell. I go with Don't Autoflow and it may take a while to get everything in the place I want it to be, but the result is my own creation, and it's well worth the time and effort. Motif is pretty easy to work with, as far as dragging photos around, resizing, swapping, etc. It also saves your work every few moments, so your work is safe.

Source: iMore

If I am looking for individual photo prints, I prefer using Shutterfly, as I've used them before for several projects. With Shutterfly, you're able to choose the size and finish, put a message on the back of all prints, and select how many you want. They start at $0.12 for 4x6 and go up to $12.74 for a 12x36 print. The prices are decent, and there are often promo codes and deals. Shutterfly is also great for putting your photos on other items, such as travel mugs, totes, cards, canvas, ornaments, and pretty much anything else you can think of.

For designing things like mugs and totes, I like to pick out photos that hold a special meaning to me, or would just look good on some merch. Shutterfly's drag-and-drop interface on the web is intuitive and easy to use.

Personalize and print

While Apple may not be doing the printing themselves anymore, they made it easy to work with third-party photo printing services directly in the Photos app on Mac. Some (like Motif) are integrated directly into Photos, and others (Shutterfly) will need you to go to the website to complete your order, but it's all a seamless process.

Are you using a Photo Extension to print out your photos from Mac? What service do you like using? Let us know in the comments.

The Photos app on Mac is one of the most popular features of macOS Monterey. It's here where your cherished memories are kept in image and video formats. When the time comes, you can move your photos from one Mac to the other. How you do this depends on whether you're using iCloud Photos. The steps below work on all of the best Macs.

Transferring using AirDrop

The quickest way to transfer a small number of photos or videos from the Photos app to another Mac is by using AirDrop. This assumes both machines are close enough together to use Bluetooth LE.

To get started:

1. Open the Photos app on your Mac from either the Applications folder or Mac Dock.
2. Choose the photos you wish to send to a new Mac.

3. Click on the Share Sheet icon at the top right.
4. Select AirDrop from the pull-down menu.
5. Confirm the transfer on the other Mac.

Using Mac Migration Assistant

If you want to transfer your entire Photos library from one Mac to other, you can do so using the Mac Migration Assistant.

Before starting, be sure both machines meet the following requirements:

1. Upgrade both Macs to the latest macOS version.
2. Make sure both machines are on the same Wi-Fi network.
3. On your old Mac, choose the Apple menu at the top left.

4. Select System Preferences from the pull-down menu.
5. Click Sharing.
6. Make sure that a name appears in the Computer Name field.

7. Follow the the Mac Migration Assistant directions.

With iCloud Photos

You will find the easiest way to transfer photos from one Mac to another is when using iCloud Photos. During the Mac setup process, you're asked to sign in to your Apple ID. When you do, the Mac will automatically sync with your iCloud content.

To confirm iCloud Photos are synced:

1. On your new Mac, choose the Apple menu at the top left.
2. Select System Preferences from the pull-down menu.
3. Click Apple ID at the top.

4. Click iCloud on the left side.
5. If necessary, check the Photos box on the right. Once checked, the Mac will begin syncing your photos from iCloud.

It's always a good idea to delete content you no longer need before you move your photos from one Mac to another from the Photos app. Yes, this can be a tedious process, depending on how many images you have. However, it's always nice to start fresh on a new Mac. A smaller Photos library also means it's that much quicker to transfer the content.

Regardless, enjoy your new Mac!

If you want your Mac's photos to wirelessly sync to all your other iOS devices and computers, you want to set up iCloud Photo Library: Apple's photo sync service lets you back up your images on all your devices, as well as access them — online or offline — on said devices. If you're willing to pay for the extra iCloud storage space, you can store an incredible amount of photos and videos, all accessible at the touch of a button or multi-touch screen. Here's how to set up iCloud photo library on Mac!

Using a PC instead? Here's how to set up iCloud Photo Library on Windows

Here's how to set it up on your Mac and get everything configured to your liking!

How to set up iCloud Photo Library on your Mac

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Select the Photos menu in the upper left corner of your screen.
3. Go to Preferences.
4. Click on the iCloud tab.

5. Check "iCloud Photos." This will begin uploading any and all images you have stored in the Photos app to iCloud.

How to optimize your photo and video storage

If you routinely shoot 4K video or high-quality images on your iPhone, iPad, or DSLR, you may run out of storage space fast. (I have a 1TB iMac, but also have almost a terabyte of 4K video stored in iCloud — it gets unwieldy, fast!) This is especially true if you have a Mac laptop with limited hard drive space: It's nice to look at your iPhone's gorgeous Portrait mode photos, but not necessarily always practical to store all of them locally.

Thankfully, Apple offers an Optimize Storage option, which lets you store full-resolution photos and videos of only your most recently shot and accessed imagery; all older photos and videos are available to download via iCloud and are stored as low-resolution previews on your device to save space. You can switch between optimizing your Mac's photos storage or storing your full library locally: Here's how!

Note: If you plan on using Optimize Storage, we suggest having at least one device that stores your entire library locally (usually a Mac with a large local or external hard drive), so you have multiple backups of your photographs and video.

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Click Photos in the App menu in the upper left corner of your screen.
3. Select Preferences from the drop-down menu.

4. Click the iCloud tab.
5. Click Optimize Mac Storage.

Full-resolution versions of your photos and videos will be uploaded to iCloud.

How to share photos with iCloud Photo Library

Apple's photo service doesn't just provide online backups and sync for your images and video: The company also offers a free sharing service that allows you to send shared albums to friends and family (or create a publicly-shared website). Here's how to turn it on for your Mac.

How to set up and use iCloud Photo Sharing

Questions?

Do you have any questions on how to set up iCloud photo library on Mac? Let us know in the comments below.

Updated September 2020: Refreshed.

What you need to know

• Mimeo Photos is launching new wall decor products.
• The wall decor comes in canvas, metal, and acrylic options.
• All wall decor options can be in portrait or landscape orientation.
• Wall decor comes in four sizes: 8x10", 11x14", 16x20", and 20x30".
• Wall Decor products start at $34.99.
• You can order your own through the Mimeo Photos Mac app or from the website.

Mimeo Photos, the No. 1 photo product extension in the Mac App Store for premium photo books, prints, calendars, cards, and more, has launched a new line of wall decor products. Users of Mimeo Photos can now turn their photos into unique acrylic, metal, or canvas wall decorations, which range in size from standard 8-by-10-inches up to 20-by-30-inches.

If you've never heard of Mimeo Photos, the company has been handcrafting photo books, cards, and calendars for Apple for over a decade. In 2017, Apple ended its in-house photo printing services with Mimeo, resulting in Mimeo Photos launching as a macOS app extension.

With these new wall decor products, customers will have three options to choose from:

The classic gallery wrapped canvas wall decoration comes with hinged hardware so you can hang it up anywhere to warm up the surrounding space. The 8-by-10-inch size even comes with an easel back so you can display it easily on a tabletop. The gallery-grade canvas is carefully stretched over a perfectly-cornered frame and has a special coating that keeps your images looking as stunning as ever.

The premium metal wall decor arrives ready to go with an easy-to-display mounting block. Images are infused onto a lightweight metal panel with a glossy finish, and this decoration adds a modern touch to any room in the house.

The acrylic option arrives ready to display, with a mounting block for the 8-by-10-inch size, and a french cleat for all other sizes. This decoration adds a delightful, upscale element to any home. With the acrylic, you get an optically clear digital grade acrylic pane that measures .220-inches thick with polished edges. The clear layer's depth creates a distinctive 3D effect that is unlike any of the other decor options.

No matter which option you choose, all of the wall decor can come in portrait or landscape orientation, and you have four sizes to choose from: 8x10", 11x14", 16x20", and 20x30". They can also have varying themes, including single, double, and even four image displays. All wall decor can also be enhanced with text, borders, background colors, and patterns if you wish.

Mimeo Photos Wall Decor will start at $34.99 and go up from there, depending on which option you choose and the size. To begin creating your own wall decor, make sure to download the app on the Mac App Store or head on over to www.mimeophotos.com.

Apple's iCloud Photo Library makes it possible for you to store all of your photos and videos in iCloud. Once uploaded, you can view them on all of your iCloud-connected devices, as well as via iCloud.com.

My Photo Stream automatically uploads new photos and sends them to all of your iCloud-connected devices. It stores the most recent 30 days' worth of photos (up to 1,000 photos). So what's the difference between them and why would you want to use one over the other? We've got the answers to your questions right here.

• What's the difference between iCloud Photo Library and My Photo Stream?
• What happens to My Photo Stream when you enable iCloud Photo Library?
• How do I access my pictures on Mac and PC with iCloud Photo Library?

What's the difference between iCloud Photo Library and My Photo Stream?

The short and most important answer: My Photo Stream doesn't count against your iCloud storage. That said, it also majorly restricts what you can sync to the cloud and your other devices. Whether that trade-off matters to you depends on your needs.

• Do you have a lot of photos that you want to access across your devices at any time? - You should use iCloud Photo Library to store and access your photos and videos. My Photo Stream only gives you access to your most recent 1,000 photos (or the past 30 days) across your devices.
• Do you have the lowest tier iCloud storage? - If you're still using up less than 5GB of iCloud storage and don't ever want to pay even $0.99 per month for more, you should stick with My Photo Stream. It doesn't count against your iCloud storage capacity. Photos tend to take up a lot of space, and you can easily max out your 5GB of free storage space if you switch to iCloud Photo Library. In fact, you'll probably get a notification as soon as you try to switch asking you to upgrade your storage plan.
• Do you want to sync your videos across all devices? - You definitely need iCloud Library, then. My Photo Stream doesn't support video at all.
• Do you use another photo storage app that works just fine? - If you've already got your cloud-based storage needs taken care of, then you probably don't want to fill up your iCloud storage with another version of the same photos. If you keep your pics and videos in Dropbox or Google Photos, or some other storage app, you could stick with My Photo Stream and only use it on occasion for pics you've recently taken.
• Do you want to access your photos from anywhere you have a web browser? - iCloud Photo Library is the only Apple Photos service that lets you view your entire photo library from anywhere you have internet access and a web browser through iCloud.com.

In short, My Photo Stream is for people that don't take a lot of photos, don't need to access them across all of their devices on a regular basis, or use another cloud storage service to regularly access their photos. It is also for people that refuse to upgrade from the free 5GB iCloud storage tier but have more than 5GB of photos.

iCloud Photo Library is for people that do take a lot of photos and want to be able to view all of their pictures across their devices (including very old ones) and want to stick with the Apple ecosystem. It's for people that are willing to spend at least a dollar every month to have that access. It's for people that also take at least some videos that they want to be able to access on all of their devices. Lastly, it's for people that want to view their photos from any device with a web browser (because icloud.com).

What iCloud storage plan should you get?

What happens to My Photo Stream when you enable iCloud Photo Library?

If you've decided to finally make the switch from My Photo Stream to iCloud Photo Library to share your content across devices, you should know a couple of things before you get started.

When you switch over to iCloud Photo Library, you'll notice that the My Photo Stream album no longer appears on your device. Don't worry: Those photos haven't disappeared. They've just been folded into your "All Photos" section. That's because iCloud Photo Library stores, well ... all your photos. If any of your devices don't have iCloud Photo Library switched on, you'll still see a My Photo Stream album, but once iCloud Photo Library is enabled, that album disappears.

Note: If you have an iPhone or iPad that only uses My Photo Stream, any new photos synced via that service won't upload to iCloud Photo Library — with one exception: if you have iCloud Photo Library enabled on your Mac, it'll automatically grab your My Photo Stream uploads (because they sync to your Mac) and upload appropriately via iCloud. Bottom line: Unless you're trusting your Mac to do the heavy lifting, you should probably enable iCloud Photo Library on all your devices to make sure no images get lost.

Even if you have iCloud Photo Library enabled on all your devices, you can use My Photo Stream to serve a different purpose: A quick-sync method for transferring screenshots and the like ASAP. Because iCloud Photo Library has to upload all your videos and photos in order, it sometimes takes a while for your newest images and screenshots to appear on your other devices. Not so for My Photo Stream: It can skip the video queue and let your recently-snapped screenshots show up on your devices with little delay.

It should also be noted that Apple seems to be phasing out My Photo Stream. In macOS Catalina, the feature is nowhere to be found in the Photos app, and anyone signing up for a new Apple ID won't have access to the feature from the get-go. It is still present in iOS 13 and later, but it seems clear that it's on the way out.

How do I access my pictures on Mac and PC with iCloud Photo Library?

Your pictures are more accessible than ever once you switch to iCloud Photo Library to store them: You can find them in the Photos app on a Mac. And if you're on a PC, you can download and install the iCloud app and find them there. If you're on anyone's computer or phone (or tablet), you can navigate to iCloud.com and sign in to view all of your photos from any web browser.

• How to set up iCloud Photo Library on your Mac
• How to set up iCloud Photo Library on Windows 10
• How to use iCloud Photo Library on iCloud.com

Any questions?

Do you have any questions about the difference between My Photo Stream and iCloud Photo Library? Put them in the comments and we'll help you out.

Updated January 2020: All of this information is up-to-date for the latest version of Photos and iCloud Photo Library, including a note that Apple is phasing out My Photo Stream.

It's been a little over a year since Apple removed the photo print products service from their Photos app, pointing users, instead, toward several third-party applications that use app extensions to use your pictures from Photos to create cards, calendars, books, and prints, and other tchotchkes.

Mimeo Photos is one of those third-party apps and offers a set of features that most closely matches what was previously available as a part of Apple's iPhoto and Photos applications. It even includes all of Apple's templates and with the additional option of printing photos.

Mimeo Photos is a free download from the Mac App Store. Even though Mimeo Photos is downloaded as an app from the App Store, you don't actually create your photo projects within the Mimeo Photos app. Instead, as an app extension, Mimeo Photos changes the behavior of the Photos app, giving you new options within photos for creating a variety of projects within the Photos app itself. Since Mimeo Photos is an app extension, you may need to open the Extensions preference in System Preferences and enable Mimeo Photos in the Photo Projects section of the Extensions preference.

Once enabled, Mimeo Photos will appear under Photos' File->Create menu, where Mimeo Photos offers options for creating projects. You'll also find it in the My Projects heading in the sidebar of the Photos app. When you create a new project, Mimeo Photos does its magic without leaving Photos to create and edit the project. If this sounds familiar, it should, as everything you create with Mimeo Photos works the same way it did when you created a new project in Photos when Apple was handling photo projects.

In addition to creating new projects Mimeo Photos can also convert any of your existing Apple Photos/iPhoto projects to Mimeo Photos projects.

Mimeo Photos offers a variety of project options:

• Photo Books: Both hard and softcover versions in a variety of sizes, ranging in price from $10-$40.
• Custom Calendars: $20 for a 12-month calendar.
• Cards: Both flat and folded in two sizes, $1/$1.50 respectively.
• Prints: Standard prints in a variety of sizes from 20 cents to $20 per print.

As was the case with Apple's tools, you have a couple of options available for creating projects:

• Create a blank project, choose a project style, drag photos to the project, arrange photos within the project
• Select pictures individually or from an album, create a new project, arrange photos within a project

One thing missing from the project, as far as I could tell, was a way to have Mimeo Photos add all of your photos to your project automatically, which is something that was available in Apple's project tool.

For every project you create there are a variety of layouts, although none of those layouts are freeform. Which is to say that you can't create a collage of photos and arrange them in any way you want to. Each project page has predefined boxes for you to put photos into and you can't diverge from that plan.

The same is true of text. You can add text to anything—BONUS!! you can add individualized text to specific dates on a calendar, even if the date has a photo on it—but text formatting is very limited. So it's not easy, say, to create a book of photos with your poetry in it and have it look like you've used a page layout program to create your book. While there are many font options, your cannot change formatting within an individual text box. So, no bold and standard text within a single text box. Although you can put two text boxes on a page and have them each have different fonts, sizes, and formatting.

Once you've created your project ordering it is as simple as a single click. Mimeo Photos will ask you how many items you want to order, will collect your shipping and credit card information, which, optionally, you can save for future use, and upload your photos.

With regard to ship times, Mimeo Photos, in my experience, under promises and over delivers. I ordered several calendars that arrived 2-3 days earlier than their expected arrival date.

Mimeo Photos is a solid addition to the Photos app with excellent project options, a simple interface, and better-than-promised ship times. However, I would like to see more options for formatting text and creating free-form picture layouts, as it is it's an excellent option for all your photo projects.

I've had a multi-Mac household pretty much since college, rocking a laptop and desktop in addition to miscellaneous iOS devices throughout the years. Dropbox and iCloud sync made most of the pains of using several Macs disappear, but iPhoto was always a problem. My laptop is tiny! My iPhoto library, not so much.

Thankfully, Photos for Mac — paired with iCloud Photo Library's Optimize Storage feature — makes working with and syncing multiple Macs a breeze. Here's how you can do it.

How to use Photos and iCloud Photo Library with multiple Macs

Here's a quick, simple breakdown on setting up your Macs to support Photos and iCloud Photo Library.

I recommend starting with your biggest iPhoto library; it'll usually be on your desktop Mac. When you open Photos for the first time, your library should import automatically; if it prompts you to create a new library, your Photos library may be stored in another location on your Mac, and you may need to manually open it.

Once you've imported your biggest library on your Mac, make sure iCloud Photo Library is turned on and syncing. You can do this by following these steps:

1. Launch Photos on your Mac.
2. Click Photos in the menu bar.
3. Select Preferences (or do this quicker by pressing ⌘,).

4. Click on the iCloud tab.

5. Check off the box for iCloud Photos.
   • You can also check off the box for Download Originals to this Mac if you have the space.
   • You can check off Optimize Mac Storage to save space on your Mac by only saving a percentage of images and video locally — the rest will be thumbnails that you can click on to download when you want to.
   Source: iMore

• How to back up your iCloud Photo Library

Now, open your other Mac, and launch Photos. If you have an iPhoto library on that secondary Mac, follow the same steps as above — import your library, then turn on iCloud Photo Library. If you have duplicates of the same photo on each computer, iCloud should automatically resolve those conflicts when it syncs, providing you with just one version of your photos when the sync process finishes.

If you don't have an iPhoto library on your secondary Mac, create a new library in Photos and turn on iCloud Photo Library. If you want to save storage space on this secondary Mac, make sure Optimize Mac Storage is selected: This will save a certain percentage of images and video locally to your device, while providing thumbnails of all the others for you to download at your leisure.

• How to create a new library with Photos for Mac

After you've set up all your Macs with Photos and the sync process has finished, you're now good to go. From here on out, any time you add photos, they'll sync to every computer you've set up with Photos.

Photos for Mac syncs a lot more than just your original photos and videos. According to a support document on Apple.com, here's what else you should expect to see sync:

• All folders and albums
• Smart Albums
• Keywords
• Memories
• Searchable keywords
• Key photo selections

There are a few things iCloud Photo Library won't sync, however. Here's Apple's list:

• Books, cards, calendars, and slideshows
• Keyword shortcuts
• Unused keywords
• Last imported album on the Mac in question
• Names and faces in the People album

If you've chosen not to enable iCloud Photo Library, Apple still offers you free syncing of your last 1000 photos via My Photo Stream, which doesn't count toward your iCloud disk space.

This will sync and download images you've imported or taken on other devices, but you won't have the option to optimize your storage or sync your albums.

Octoober 2019: Updated for macOS Catalina.

Serenity Caldwell contributed to an earlier version of this guide.

We take a lot of photos with our iPhones and even DSLRs and other cameras. Photos are great for capturing memories with others, or when you just want to get a snapshot of something beautiful. Photos on Mac can help you keep all of your photos in one place, and even help you organize them.

• How to add pictures and videos to albums
• How to organize albums and folders
• How to use smart albums
• How to navigate Photos for Mac faster with the sidebar
• How to navigate moments, collections, and year views
• How to navigate through Years, Months, and Days in macOS Catalina
• How to create a new library
• How to switch between libraries in Photos for Mac
• How to move your Photos library to an external hard drive

How to add pictures and videos to albums

If you have a lot of photos and videos, one of the simplest and easiest ways to start organizing everything is to make use of albums, especially when you give them good names. And if you use iCloud Photo Library, all of your albums in Photos for Mac get synced to your iOS devices too.

1. Launch Photos on your Mac.

2. Click on Photos in the sidebar, under the Library section.
3. Pick out the photos you want to add to an album, either new or existing.
   • Hold down the command key on your Mac and click to select multiple photos.

4. Right-click on your chosen photos and videos.
5. Move the cursor to Add to.
6. You can choose an existing album, or create new album.
   • If making a new album, give it a good, easy-to-remember name.

Optionally, you can make a new album at any time by clicking the + button that appears in the sidebar next to My Albums. Drag-and-drop the albums in whatever order you want to rearrange them in the sidebar.

How to organize albums and folders

When you have a lot of albums, it may be better to clean it all up by organizing albums into folders, which are like collections of albums. It's easy to do.

1. Launch Photos on your Mac.
2. Either right-click on My Albums in the sidebar, or hover above and then click on the + button that appears next to My Albums.

3. Click New Folder.
4. Give your folder a name.

5. Drag the albums that you want into that folder.

How to use Smart Albums

Smart Albums are like regular albums, but smarter, obviously. They're great for helping you quickly organize images without the need of manually adding each one to an album because it's all automated.

1. Launch Photos on your Mac.
2. Right-click on My Albums or click the + button that appears next to My Albums.

3. Select New Smart Album.
4. Give your Smart Album a name.
5. Choose the parameters for your Smart Album.

6. Click OK to confirm.

Smart Albums have a large number of different parameters, such as photos, faces, aperture, ISO, Live Photo, RAW, Portrait, and more. With all of these options, you can create many different Smart Albums to suit whatever it is you need.

If you're not satisfied with the Smart Album, you can always tweak the settings by clicking on the gear icon that's next to the Smart Album's title, then re-select the parameters you want to use.

Unfortunately, Smart Albums do not sync to your other devices through iCloud Photo Library, as they're only available on your Mac.

How to navigate Photos for Mac faster with the sidebar

The Sidebar in Photos is a great way to quickly jump between various areas in Photos quickly and easily. Plus, it helps you find albums that may otherwise be hidden, so this was a design choice made by Apple.

However, if you are running macOS Sierra and older, you can actually hide or unhide the sidebar as you wish.

1. Launch Photos on your Mac.
2. Click on View in the menu bar.
3. Select Show Sidebar in the menu.
4. The sidebar will appear on the left side of the screen.
5. Follow the steps above to hide it (make sure Show Sidebar is unchecked).

How to navigate moments, collections, and year views in macOS Mojave and earlier

One of the coolest things about Photos is that it intelligently groups all of your photos and videos into moments, collections, and years.

This means that your photos appear in a timeline and are grouped by things like location, or even event. It's a great way to take a look back at your memories and relive those specific moments in time.

The Moments, Collections, and Year views are only available in macOS Mojave and older.

1. Launch Photos on your Mac.
2. Make sure that you're in the Photos view from the sidebar.
3. Click on Photos, Moments, Collections, or Years buttons at the top of the window.

4. Click on a section of a Year to move to that Collection, or a section of a Collection to drill down into that Moment, or an item in a Moment to view that image or video in closer detail.

5. You can also use your keyboard's arrow keys to move between photos and videos in a Moment.
6. A single click on an item selects it, while a double click takes you to view it.

In the Year and Collections views, thumbnails can be small. You can click-and-hold and then drag the cursor in any direction over the thumbnails to get a larger preview. Letting go will take you directly to the image that the cursor was last on.

How to navigate through Years, Months, and Days in macOS Catalina

To replace the previous Moments/Collections/Years view, Catalina changed it to Years, Months, and Days for simplicity.

1. Launch Photos on your Mac.
2. Make sure you're in the Photos section in the sidebar.

3. Click the Years, Months, or Days buttons at the top of the window. The default view is All Photos.

4. Clicking on Years lets you see each year as a block. Double-clicking the year takes you into Months.

5. When you double-click on a Month, you'll drill down into the Days view.

How to create a new library with Photos for Mac

You can create a new library for your photos at any time with Photos for Mac. To do so, make sure that you quit Photos and reopen it with the following method to get the Library options.

1. Hold down the Option key on your keyboard.
2. Double-click on Photos on your Mac.
3. Click on the Create New button in the Choose Library window.
4. Name your Library.
5. Click OK.

You've now created a brand new Photos Library. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to migrate over photos and video, so you will need to export the content you want, and then import it back into the new library.

• How to import images and folders into Photos

How to switch between Libraries in Photos for Mac

When you create a new library, you may still want to go back to a previous library for something. Fortunately, it's easy to switch between multiple libraries.

1. Make sure that Photos is not open (quit if it is).
2. Hold down the Option key on your keyboard.
3. Double-click on Photos.
4. Click on the name of the library you want to open.

Voilá! Just make sure to repeat this process each time you want to switch to a different Photo library.

How to move your Photos library to an external hard drive

If you're low on storage space on your Mac, you can just move your Photos Library to an external hard drive. Keep in mind though, that you will need to have this external drive plugged in to access your Photos Library, even if you have iCloud Photo Library enabled. And you aren't able to create a second Photos Library that has iCloud Photo Library enabled on your Mac, so be wary.

1. Launch a Finder window on your Mac.
2. Click on the Mac hard drive (Macintosh HD) in the sidebar.
3. Double-click on the Users folder.
4. Double-click on your username.
5. Double-click on your Pictures folder.
6. Click on the Photos Library file and then drag it to your external hard drive in the sidebar.

This process may take a while, depending on how big your Photos library is.

A note on reference libraries

The Photos app technically supports the management of images that aren't locally stored within its library — that is, you can keep a set of images in a folder called "October Trip" and manage them within Photos without having to make a separate copy of them. You can do this by navigating to Photos > Preferences from the menu bar, selecting the General tab, and unchecking the "Copy items to the Photos library" box under Importing.

That said, reference libraries won't play nicely with iCloud Photo Library users; you may run into problems when syncing, or not be able to sync at all. So if you plan on using a reference library, you'll have to opt out of iCloud Photo Library.

I also didn't have any luck getting referenced files to sync properly with Photos — I'd delete a photo, but the reference file would stay in its original location, even after deleting it from the "Recently Deleted" folder. Not sure if that's a bug or just not how Photos wants us managing referenced photos, but worth noting.

Questions?

Sound off in the comments below!

October 2019: Updated for macOS Catalina.

Apple's Photos for Mac has built upon the reliable foundations laid out by iPhoto and Photos for iOS to offer users like you a speedy and functional way to manage, edit, and share all their images (without any of the stress).

Plus, with the Markup editor, you can really get creative with your memories and make something awesome!

Whether this is your first time using a photo management app, you're upgrading from iPhoto, or you're exploring a non-Aperture or Lightroom avenue, here's what you need to know about Photos for macOS!

• Getting started
• How to import images and folders into Photos
• How to copy imported files to your Photos library
• How to import your iPhoto Library into Photos for macOS
• How to import your Aperture library into Photos for Mac
• How to bring up EXIF, location, and other metadata information in Photos for Mac
• How to add a title, description, and keywords to a picture or video in Photos for Mac
• How to manage keywords with Photos for Mac
• How to search for your pictures and videos in Photos for Mac
• How to search for a specific category in the Photos app
• How to use smart albums as "advanced search" in Photos for Mac

Getting started with Photos on the Mac

The first time you open Photos, you're shown an overview of what exactly the app will look like once you upload all your pictures, videos, and memories. You'll get a quick rundown of what you can expect.

One option with the Photos app is being able to make physical memories, like calendars, collages, mugs, and more, but they're only available in the U.S., Canada, Japan, and certain European and Pacific Asian countries.

The introduction will show you how you can organize and categorize your photos.

• Should you use iCloud Photo Library?

From here, your path diverges a bit depending on whether you're new to photo management or a former iPhoto, Aperture, or Lightroom user.

Do you have folders of unorganized images glaring at you from your desktop? Have you never used one of Apple's other Mac photo programs like iPhoto or Aperture? Photos makes it simple to get that content off your desktop and iPhone and into Photos on the Mac and in the cloud.

Once you've finished the initial setup process, you can get started by uploading your pictures and videos or by taking a tour. If you are unfamiliar with Photos, then the tour is the best way to go!

Once you're finished the tour, you can go ahead and either...

• Connect a camera or memory card
• Drag pictures directly into Photos
• Choose import from the file menu
• Turn on iCloud Photo Library in Preferences

... And just like that, you're good to start uploading photos!

As of macOS Catalina, Aperture is no longer compatible. You will still be able to use Photos to choose your Aperture library as demonstrated below, but this may only show the original photos and not any edits you've made. Apple will be releasing an update to macOS Catalina that will address this issue. Until then, you should keep your Aperture library and expect to migrate it to Photos again.

Apple announced in 2014 that it would no longer continue developing for iPhoto or Aperture, its older photo storage and editing programs for the Mac. Instead, the company launched Photos. If you've been resisting the transition, but have finally decided to switch to Photos on the Mac, it isn't as painful as you might think.

If you only had a single iPhoto library on your Mac, it should upgrade automatically as soon as you open the Photos app. Your old iPhoto library will still remain if you need to use iPhoto for whatever reason, but changes made to those older images won't automatically sync to your new Photos library.

If you had multiple libraries on your machine, Photos will ask you to select which library you'd like to import. Unfortunately, you can't consolidate multiple libraries into a single Photos library — you have to pick which one you want to use. If you need to do this, you can use Aperture first to consolidate libraries, then import that unified library into Photos. However, there is no real good way to import an existing Aperture library into Photos aside from a manual migration.

If you switched to Lightroom a while ago but now want to make the move to Photos, your best bet is to load your Lightroom folders and files directly into Photos. Just note down where they're stored on your hard drive, and then import away.

How to sync your Lightroom exports with Photos on Mac

How to import images and folders into Photos

After you've gotten Photos set up, the next step is to import your images. Here's what you need to know about bringing your older pictures and libraries to Photos for Mac.

1. Open Photos from your Dock or Applications folder.
2. Click on the File menu.

3. Select Import (or type command-Shift-I).
4. Find and select the image(s) you're looking to import.

5. Click Review for Import.

6. Confirm your photos by clicking Import All New Photos in the upper right corner.

The file will now be added to your Photos library.

In the Finder, you can also simply drag and drop the images you want to import onto the Photos icon; Photos will import them.

Bear in mind, though, that Photos' default behavior is not to include original images in imports. It keeps links to them, so you can use Photos to edit or catalog them but still keep them where they are.

This is a double-edged sword: It reduces the size of Photos' library but if your goal is to clean up folders and disks with lots of photos on them, it can get confusing. To put everything actually in your Photos library, make sure to modify Photos' preferences to copy imported files to your Photos library. There's another important reason to do this if you plan to share those imported images on other devices: Only items copied to Photos' library will be uploaded to iCloud Photo Library.

How to copy imported files to your Photos library

1. With Photos open, click on the Photos.
2. Click Preferences...

3. Check Copy items to the Photos Library.

Doing this means only items copied to the library will be uploaded to iCloud Photos.

How to import your iPhoto Library into Photos for macOS

If you're upgrading to Photos for Mac from iPhoto and you've only ever had a single iPhoto library on your Mac, your upgrade path is easy: After you open the app for the first time, Photos will automatically import all your iPhoto images into the app.

Your old iPhoto library will still remain if you need to use iPhoto for whatever reason, but changes made to those older images won't automatically sync to your new Photos library. If you don't need your old iPhoto library, you can toss it in the trash — your images are now safely in Photos (and, if you've turned on iCloud Photo Library, in iCloud as well).

Photos for Mac is only compatible with one primary library per Mac: This means that you can't combine multiple old iPhoto or Aperture libraries into one master library.

As such, if you have multiple libraries on your machine, Photos will ask you to select which library you'd like to import when you first launch the app. Once you've selected the library you want to use, Photos will prep and import those images.

1. Hold down the Option key on your keyboard while clicking on Photos until a pop-up menu appears.
2. Click on the Library that you want to open in the Choose Library pop-up.

3. Click the Choose Library button.

You can still upgrade your other older libraries to separate Photos libraries; you'll just have to individually import each one by option-clicking the Photos icon when starting the app.

These other Photos libraries function identically to each other, with one exception: Only one library can be synced with iCloud Photo Library at a time. Your others will be locally (or externally, if you have them on a hard drive) siloed from iCloud's sync service.

How to import your Aperture library into Photos for Mac

As of macOS Catalina, Aperture is no longer compatible. You will still be able to use Photos to choose your Aperture library as demonstrated below, but this may only show the original photos, and not any edits you've made. Apple will be releasing an update to macOS Catalina that will address this issue. Until then, you should keep your Aperture library and expect to migrate it to Photos again.

If you want your existing Aperture library to be your main Photos library, simply select it as part of the initial setup of Photos for Mac.

If you want to import your Aperture library as an additional Photos library, here's how.

1. Locate your Aperture library in the Finder and Control-click or right-click on it. The default location is in the Pictures folder.
2. Hover over Open With.

3. Click Photos where it appears in the menu.

Photos will now launch and will import the Aperture library. Once it's completed, all your Aperture library photos will be there, and you'll be able to find your stacks, projects, and events in the sidebar on the left.

How to bring up EXIF, location, and other metadata information in Photos for Mac

1. Launch Photos on your Mac
2. Select the picture or video you want to find out about

3. Click on Window.

4. Click Info (or just hit Command + I).

The info pane will present all the data you need, and you can even edit title, description, keyword, faces, and other data right there, right away.

How to add a title, description, and keywords to a picture or video in Photos for Mac

1. Launch Photos on your Mac
2. Select the picture or video you want to find out about

3. Press Command + I to pull up the photos info.
4. Click on Add a Title at the top and type in your title.

5. Click on Add a Description and type in a little about the picture or video.
6. Click on Add a Keyword and enter some words that'll help you find the picture or video later, like "family", "Bob's birthday 2014", "Apple Watch event" — whatever works for you.

How to manage keywords with Photos for Mac

If you're more of a power keyword user, Photos for Mac has a more powerful keyword tool for you.

1. Launch Photos on your Mac
2. Press Command + K to pull up the keyword box.

3. Click on a Keyword to apply it to the currently selected picture or video. (Or just type its shortcut.)
4. Click again on a Keyword to remove it from the currently selected picture or video. (Or just type its shortcut again.)

5. Click on Edit Keywords to change the current keywords.
6. Click on + to add a new keyword and shortcut, - to remove an existing one, or Rename to change it.

How to search for your pictures and videos in Photos for Mac

1. Launch Photos on your Mac.
2. Click on the Search bar in the top right corner.

3. Enter the terms you want to search for. You can enter multiple terms, e.g. "Cupertino Lory March 25 2019 apple".

4. Choose the picture or video you want from the list Photos populates.

How to search for a specific category in the Photos app

The Photos app has an AI feature built-in, which scans your photos and places them into categories of its own making. It's somewhat hit and miss (I have a ton of pictures of phones, but typing "phone" yields no results), but if you're looking for dog, cat, sunset, or other photos that might fall under a fairly generic category, this type of search can help you out!

1. Launch the Photos app from your dock.
2. Click the Search bar in the upper right corner.

3. Type the category you would like to search for; for example, "coffee".

4. Click the option you would like to select. All of the photos and videos related to that keyword will appear.

How to use smart albums as "advanced search" in Photos for Mac

The smart folder system in Photos for Mac is really clever and allows for a lot of options. If you need something more complex than standard search, especially if you think you might run it even semi-frequently, a smart folder might be a good alternative.

• How to use smart folders in Photos for Mac

Questions?

Let us know in the comments below!

October 2019: Updated for macOS Catalina. Serenity Caldwell contributed to an earlier version of this guide.

Skylum Software on Thursday released a new plugin for photographers who want access to unique photo adjustments and effects, but don't want to switch software titles. Luminar Flex is a plugin that adds the popular Luminar engine and filter set to existing photo-editing workflows. At launch, Luminar Flex is compatible with third-party such as Photoshop, Lightroom Classic, Photoshop Elements, and Photos for macOS.

Available to purchase through the Skylum Software website, Luminar Flex offer over 50 filters for corrections and enhancements not found elsewhere. Among these is the introduction of Luminar Looks. Using artificial intelligence, this tool provides more than 70 one-click Looks which you can use as a starting point to create unique projects.

There's also the Accent AI that automatically analyzes and corrects photos using more than a dozen controls at once; AI Sky Enhancer, which adds color to images featuring dulls skies; and Golden Hour, which brings a warm-toned sunlit effect to photos; and much more.

Luminar Flex also offers a new set of workspaces including:

• Expert: All essential tools that professional photographers need for image processing.
• Black & White: Optimized for creating black and white masterpieces.
• Image Aware: Smart Workspace for fast and high-quality image-aware processing thanks to the power of AI.
• Intensify: Boost the details and structure in the photographs to get very clear and detail-rich image.
• Drone & Aerial: Essential tools for quick edits of drone photos.
• Film Lab: Tools for emulating the style and effects of film photography.
• Relight and Color: Essential tools for creative photography.
• Portrait: Optimized for creating beautiful portraits shot under any light.

The Luminar Flex plugin is fully compatible with Adobe Photoshop CC and Photoshop Elements, and also ties into Adobe Lightroom Classic CC's external editing system and Photos for macOS's extensions. Also, as a Photoshop user, you can benefit by using Luminar Flex with Smart Objects, allowing you to revise edits even after closing a document.

Up until this point, many of the tools provided in Luminar Flex were limited to Skylum Software's Luminar 3 standalone title. With the launch of Luminar Flex, those tools are finally available to users of other photo-editing software.

Alex Tsepko, CEO of Skylum explains:

Luminar Flex looks very interesting; you can download a tree trial copy through the Skylum Software website. Luminar Flex is $59 and comes with a 60 day money back guarantee.

Whether you're trying to free up storage, battling duplicates, eliminating personal photos no one else ever needs to see, or just cutting out the bad shots, Photos for Mac makes it easy to delete single or multiple pictures or videos in a snap!

If you're using iCloud Photo Library, anything you delete on your Mac will also be deleted on all your other iCloud Photo Library-enabled devices, including your iPhone and/or iPad. Deleted pictures and videos can be recovered for up to 30 days (unless you have zero storage space on your computer), or can be deleted immediately and forever. Here's how!

• How to delete pictures or videos in Photos for Mac
• How to delete an entire Album in Photos for Mac
• How to recover deleted pictures or videos in Photos for Mac
• How to permanently delete pictures or videos in Photos for Mac

How to delete pictures or videos in Photos for Mac

You can select one picture or video by clicking on it, a range of pictures or videos by clicking on the first one and then shift-clicking on the last one, or a number of arbitrary pictures or videos by command-clicking on each of them in turn.

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Select the picture(s) or video(s) you want to delete

3. Right-click on an image or shift-click on a bunch and then right-click and click Delete. (You can also click on an image and press delete on your keyboard, or command + delete to skip the confirmation dialog.)
4. Click Delete to confirm, if prompted.

How to delete an entire Album in Photos for Mac

You can also delete some or all of the pictures or videos intelligently grouped by Photos into an Album.

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Click on the the Album you would like to delete.

3. Right-click on the album you want to delete and click Delete. (You can also click on an album and hit the delete key on your keyboard, or command + delete to skip the confirmation dialog.)
4. Click Delete to confirm.

The Album will no longer appear in your sidebar.

How to recover deleted pictures or videos in Photos for Mac

If you delete a picture or video by accident, or later regret it, you have 30 days to reverse it.

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Click the Recently Deleted folder in your sidebar.

3. Click on the pictures or videos you want to recover. A blue check-mark will appear to indicate that they've been selected.
4. Click on the Recover button at the top right.

How to permanently delete pictures or videos in Photos for Mac

If you want to make sure a deleted picture or video is eradicated immediately and can't be recovered, you can do that as well.

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Click the Recently Deleted folder in your sidebar.

3. Click on the pictures or videos you want to permanently delete.
4. Click on the Delete button at the top right. A prompt will appear on screen: just hit delete, and you're good to go!

Any Photos for Mac questions?

If you need help deleting pictures or videos, or have any questions at all about Photos for Mac, drop them in the comments below!

Updated March 2019: Updated steps and made sure everything is up to date for the latest version of macOS.

Apple's photo management software for the Mac, Photos, has grown to be a fairly competent all-purpose storage locker. But as your photo and video library grows — and especially if you've taken advantage of iCloud Photo Library — you may find that your Photos library strains to fit on your Mac's hard drive.

While there are options to keep your Mac from running out of space, like optimizing your photo storage if you use iCloud Photo Library, it comes at a cost: Without a fully-stored Photos library, you won't be able to create secondary backups of your images and video. (And as good as iCloud has become, your photos and video are precious enough that they're worth keeping backed up in multiple places.)

There is an alternative: Moving your Photos library to an external drive (or creating an entirely separate library and syncing it with iCloud). Here's how to do it, and some reasons why you should — and shouldn't! — consider it for your needs.

Why you should (and shouldn't) use an external drive with Photos for Mac

There are a number of reasons why an external drive might make sense when you're working with Photos for Mac:

• You have a giant Photos library (and, if you use iCloud Photo Library, you want to ensure you have a secondary backup of everything in that library)
• You frequently swap computers and want to work on your images from any Mac
• Your library isn't huge, but you'd prefer to save space on your Mac for other files
• You share a computer with other users and you have limited drive space
• If you're working with space constraints on your primary computer, it's one of the easiest ways to back up your full iCloud Photo Library

That said, there are some downsides, too. Here are some reasons you might not want to use an external drive:

• You don't have a big enough library to warrant moving it off your Mac
• You don't want to have to worry about always having your external drive connected to view and edit your images
• You use a laptop frequently and can't afford an SSD, and you don't want to risk breaking your disc-based hard drive by constantly moving it
• You don't want to accidentally create duplicate libraries that can't be connected to iCloud Photo Library (because your offsite library is connected)
• Unless you purchase a speedy drive, working externally is almost always slower than working on your default hard drive
• You don't want to spend the money on an external drive
• If you use an automated backup service for your computer, you'll have to set up a second set of rules for backing up your hard drive

Best external drives for storing photos

Okay, so you've decided to move your Photos library over to an external drive. What next? If you already have an external drive, you can always use it for storing your Photos library (and save on cash). But if you're considering getting a new drive for this endeavor, here's what I suggest:

• Get a drive that's at least 1-2TB in space, preferably 4TB. With the iPhone able to save 4K video, our space needs aren't shrinking anytime soon: The bigger hard drive you can afford, the better.
• If you're buying a stationary hard drive, buying a disc-based hard drive is great, but buy good brands — don't try and save $50 on an off-brand hard drive. It's rarely worth the HDD failure.
• If you're buying a portable hard drive, consider SSD: It's very pricey in comparison to a disc-based drive, but if you know you'll be frequently moving around — especially if you plan to move around with the drive connected — you want a drive that can take a little rumble and tumble without skipping or failing.
• Hard drive speeds are important, too: The faster a drive's write speed, the quicker your images will copy; the faster a drive's read speed, the easier it will be for you to view images or video and edit them, too.

Want some recommendations for specific external hard drives? We've got those, too.

• Best USB-C Hard Drives for Mac
• Best External Hard Drives for Mac
• Best Shock-Resistant Hard Drives for Mac

How to move your current Photos library to an external drive and use it as your primary library

As with creating a new library, moving your library to your external drive is a multi-step process. Here's how to go about it.

1. Connect an external drive to your Mac via USB, USB-C, or Thunderbolt.
2. Open a new Finder window.
3. Open your external drive in that window.
4. Open a new Finder window. Don't close your previous window (open to your external drive), as you'll need it shortly.

5. Click the Go menu and navigate to your Home folder.
6. Select the Pictures folder.
7. Select your old library.
8. Drag it to your external drive in the other Finder window.

Your library will begin to copy over to your external drive. Depending on the size of your library and speed of your drive, this can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours, so be patient. Don't unplug your drive or turn off your computer during this process.

Before you open your copied Photos library on the external drive, you have to disassociate the library on your Mac from iCloud. (If you don't use iCloud Photo Library, you can skip these steps.)

1. Open Photos on your Mac.
2. Go to the Photos menu.
3. Select Settings.
4. Click on the iCloud tab.
5. Uncheck iCloud Photos.

6. Press Remove from Mac to remove any undownloaded low-resolution items from this library.
7. Quit Photos.

Now, it's time to make your newly-copied Photos library your system default.

1. Open Photos on your Mac.
2. Go to the Photos menu.
3. Select Settings.
4. Click Use as System Photo Library.

Your external library is now set up to be your system default, but it's not currently connected to iCloud. If you use iCloud Photo Library and want to keep that connection active so that you can continually download items you've stored, read on. (Otherwise, you can skip this step.)

1. Open Photos on your Mac.
2. Go to the Photos menu.
3. Select Preferences.
4. Click on the iCloud tab.

5. Check iCloud Photos.
6. Click Download Originals to this Mac.
7. Wait for your Mac to download your images from iCloud. (Depending on the size of your iCloud library and your internet connection, this may take up to 24 hours; don't disconnect your external drive or turn off your Mac during this time.)

Once your library has fully synced and downloaded images, you can disconnect your drive; whenever you want to use your Photos library, you now need to connect your drive to your Mac.

A personal plea: Please, please, please make sure your library is fully copied and working on your external drive before you follow the steps below — once you've thrown away your original library, it's gone!

1. Open a new Finder window.
2. Click the Go menu and navigate to your Home folder.
3. Select the Pictures folder.
4. Select your old library.

5. Drag it to the Trash (or press Command-Delete on your keyboard).
6. Empty the Trash.
7. Open a new Finder window. Don't close your previous window (open to the Pictures folder), as you'll need it later.
8. Select your external drive.
9. Right-click (or control-click) on your copied Photos library on your external drive.
10. Select Make Alias.
11. Drag the alias to the Pictures folder.
12. Rename the alias to remove the "alias" part of its name.

Now you have a direct link to your copied Photos library from the Pictures folder: This prevents your computer from accidentally creating multiple Photos libraries in case you forget to launch Photos with your external drive connected.

Note: If you're worried about accidentally creating libraries, you can always launch Photos by option-clicking on its icon in the Dock or Applications folder; this will give you the option of picking which library you'd like to launch.

How to create a new Photos library on your external drive and use it as your primary library

Creating a new library on your external drive is a multi-step process. Here's how to go about it.

Before you create a new Photos library, you have to disassociate your current library as your system default. (If you don't use iCloud Photos, you can skip these steps.)

1. Open Photos on your Mac.
2. Go to the Photos menu.
3. Select Preferences.
4. Click on the iCloud tab.

5. Uncheck iCloud Photos.
6. Press Remove from Mac to remove all low-resolution items from this library.
7. Press Remove from Mac once more to confirm.
8. Quit Photos.

Once you've done this, it's time to create a new library.

1. Connect an external drive to your Mac via USB, USB-C, or Thunderbolt.
2. Option-click (and continue holding down option) when launching the Photos app on your Mac.
3. When it asks you to choose a library, click on Create New….
4. Name your library.

5. Press the Down arrow to expand the File picker and choose your external drive as the new location.
6. Press OK to save it to your external drive.

You'll now have an empty library on your external drive. Next up: Making it your system library.

1. Open Photos on your Mac.
2. Go to the Photos menu.
3. Select Preferences.
4. Click Use as System Photo Library.

Your external library has now been set up from scratch. If you use iCloud Photos and want to download all the items you've stored there to have an external backup, read on. (Otherwise, you can skip this step.)

1. Open Photos on your Mac.
2. Go to the Photos menu.
3. Select Preferences.
4. Click on the iCloud tab.

5. Check iCloud Photos.
6. Click Download Originals to this Mac.
7. Wait for your Mac to download your images from iCloud. (Depending on the size of your library and your internet connection, this may take up to 24 hours; don't disconnect your external drive or turn off your Mac during this time.)

Once your library has fully synced and downloaded images, you can disconnect your drive; whenever you want to use your Photos library, you now need to connect your drive to your Mac.

A personal plea: Please, please, please make sure your new library is live and working on your external drive before you follow the steps below — once you've thrown away your original library, it's gone!

1. Open a new Finder window.
2. Click the Go menu and navigate to your Home folder.
3. Select the Pictures folder.
4. Select your old library.

5. Drag it to the Trash (or press Command-Delete on your keyboard).
6. Empty the Trash.
7. Open a new Finder window. Don't close your previous window (open to the Pictures folder), as you'll need it later.
8. Select your external drive.
9. Right-click (or control-click) on your new Photos library.
10. Select Make Alias.

11. Drag the alias to the Pictures folder.
12. Rename the alias to remove the "alias" part of its name.

Now you have a direct link to your Photos library from the Pictures folder: This prevents your computer from accidentally creating multiple Photos libraries in case you forget to launch Photos with your external drive connected.

Note: If you're worried about accidentally creating libraries, you can always launch Photos by option-clicking on its icon in the Dock or Applications folder; this will give you the option of picking which library you'd like to launch.

Running a cleaner Mac

Moving your Photos library to an external will free up valuable space on your internal hard drive. Just make sure you connect the external hard drive whenever you plan to use the Photos library, to avoid confusion or multiple libraries. Now your Mac will have less files and photos weighing it down! If it's still running tight, you may need to look for other solutions to free up space, or upgrade to a newer Mac with more storage space. 

Updated December 2022: Updated for the latest version of macOS.

Whether you're cropping your photos, importing them into Photoshop, or adjusting your color and saturation, there are tons of different ways that you can successfully edit pictures and videos in Photos for Mac. Photos for Mac has everything you need to make your pictures look exactly how you want, and what's more, all the edits are non-destructive, so if you don't get something perfect the first time, you can change it again whenever you like or even go right back to the original.

Combine that with the large screen, and editing photos on the Mac isn't just easy; it's accessible to everyone. Here's how to use it!

• How to adjust brightness with Photos for Mac
• How to adjust color saturation in Photos for Mac
• How to convert an image to black and white with Photos for Mac
• How to access white balance, noise reduction, and more in Photos for Mac
• How to adjust Sharpness with Photos for Mac
• How to adjust Definition with Photos for Mac
• How to adjust Noise Reduction with Photos for Mac
• How to adjust Vignette with Photos for Mac
• How to use Selective Color in Photos for Mac
• How to quickly retouch an image in the Photos app on your Mac
• How to correct Red-Eye in Photos for Mac
• How to add a filter to a picture in Photos for Mac
• How to automatically crop and straighten in Photos for Mac
• How to manually crop in Photos for Mac
• How to manually straighten in Photos for Mac
• How to rotate in Photos for Mac
• How to flip in Photos for Mac
• How to trim a video in Photos for Mac
• How to reset the trim on a video in Photos for Mac
• How to edit a video from Photos for Mac
• How to move an image out of Photos and into Photoshop, Pixelmator, Acorn, or other external editor
• How to bring and edited image back into Photos for Mac

How to adjust brightness with Photos for Mac

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Find the photo in your photo library that you'd like to edit and double-click on it.
3. Click on the Edit button in the top navigation panel.
4. Drag the Light slider left or right to adjust the brilliance in the photo.

5. Click Done on the top right of the Photos window.

How to adjust color saturation in Photos for Mac

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Find the photo in your photo library that you'd like to edit and double-click on it.
3. Click on the Edit button in the top navigation panel.
4. Drag the Color slider left or right to adjust the brilliance in the photo.

5. Click Done on the top right of the Photos window.

How to convert an image to black and white with Photos for Mac

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Find the photo in your photo library that you'd like to edit and double-click on it.
3. Click on the Edit button in the top navigation panel.
4. Drag the Black & White slider left and right to activate and adjust the photo's black and white intensity. You can also adjust a photo's black and white Neutrals, Tone, and Grain.

5. Click Done on the top right of the Photos window.

How to access white balance, noise reduction, and more in Photos for Mac

Histogram, sharpen, definition, noise reduction, vignette, white balance, and levels can all be added to your photo adjustment options; that elevates Photos for Mac from a basic photo editing tool to something more advanced.

The histogram, for example, lets you see the distribution of light and dark, as well as red, blue, and green pixels within your image. Sharpen and definition can help make the blurry aspects clearer. Vignette darkens images around the edges, and white balance and levels let you change casts, crush blacks, and more. All you have to do is turn them on!

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Find the photo in your photo library that you'd like to edit and double-click on it.
3. Click on the Edit button in the top navigation panel.
4. Click the arrow next to any adjustment you'd like to expand on the right. There's everything from Retouch to Vignette.

5. Click Done on the top right of the Photos window.

How to adjust Sharpness with Photos for Mac

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Find the photo in your photo library that you'd like to edit and double-click on it.
3. Click on the Edit button in the top navigation panel.
4. Click the arrow next to Sharpen on the right.
5. Drag the sliders left and right to adjust your photo's sharpness. You can optionally click Auto to let Photos automatically sharpen the image for you.

6. Click Done on the top right of the Photos window.

How to adjust Definition with Photos for Mac

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Find the photo in your photo library that you'd like to edit and double-click on it.
3. Click on the Edit button in the top navigation panel.
4. Click the arrow next to Definition.
5. Drag the slider left and right to adjust your photo's definition. You can optionally click Auto to have it done automatically.

6. Click Done on the top right of the Photos window.

How to adjust Noise Reduction with Photos for Mac

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Find the photo in your photo library that you'd like to edit and double-click on it.
3. Click on the Edit button in the top navigation panel.
4. Click on the arrow next to Noise Reduction.
5. Drag the slider left and right to adjust your photo's noise reduction. You can optionally click Auto if you want it done automatically.

6. Click Done on the top right of the Photos window.

How to adjust Vignette with Photos for Mac

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Find the photo in your photo library that you'd like to edit and double-click on it.
3. Click on the Edit button in the top navigation panel.
4. Click on the arrow next to Vignette.
5. Drag the sliders left and right to adjust your photo's vignette. You can optionally click Auto if you want it done automatically.

6. Click Done on the top right of the Photos window.

How to use Selective Color in Photos for Mac

Selective Color allows you to adjust the Hue, Saturation, Luminance, and Range of certain colors, meaning you can choose how the colors look and how prominent they are compared to the other colors in the photo.

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Double-click the photo you want to edit.
3. Click Edit.

4. Click on Selective Color in the sidebar.
5. Adjust the sliders to your liking.

6. Click Done on the top right of the Photos window.

How to quickly retouch an image in the Photos app on your Mac

Ah, the controversial act of retouching a photo, but let's face it: we've all done it. Luckily, retouching a photo is a lot easier than going and retaking it!

Photos for Mac offers a retouch tool that lets you quickly remove small imperfections such as skin blemishes or even a small object that wasn't supposed to be in the image to begin with. It may not be as powerful as spot healing tools in software editing programs like Photoshop, but in a pinch, it gets the job done!

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Find the photo in your photo library that you'd like to edit and double-click on it.
3. Click on the Edit button in the top navigation panel.
4. Click on the arrow next to Retouch on the right.
5. Drag the slider to adjust the size of the retouch tool in the right hand menu if you need to before clicking on the area that you need to retouch.
6. Click and drag on the photo to retouch the areas that need it.

7. When you're happy with the results, click Done in the upper right corner.

You also have the option of holding down the option key on your keyboard and clicking to select a pattern. If you ever need to Undo a retouch, just hit Command-Z on your keyboard to step back.

How to correct Red-Eye in Photos for Mac

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Double-click the photo you want to edit.
3. ClickEdit.

4. Click Red-eye in the sidebar.
5. Adjust the size of the brush with the slider.

6. Click the brush.
7. Click on the eye you want to fix.

8. Click Done on the top right of the Photos window.

How to add a filter to a picture in Photos for Mac

Photos for Mac brings the same kind of damage control to the Mac. Whether it's by adding a color overlay, boosting or flattening contrast, it lets you take pictures that look wrong and make them look artistic instead.

They're the same subtle filters Apple introduced for the iPhone and iPad, while they may not have the same punch as some others, they're consistent and even more importantly — they're non-destructive. That means you can change your mind and even revert to normal at any time.

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Find the photo you'd like to add a filter to and double-click on it to open it.
3. Click on the Edit button in the upper right corner.
4. Click on Filters in the top navigation.

5. Click the filter you'd like to apply by clicking on it.
6. When you find one you like, click on Done in the upper right corner.

How to automatically crop and straighten in Photos for Mac

Whether the horizon or a building looks oddly angled, or extra people or space are stealing focus from your subjects, Photos for Mac has just exactly the tools to help you line up what you want and cut out what you don't so that even if you didn't frame the perfect photo, you can still end up with it.

Also, if you need to rotate or flip a picture, you can do that too!

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Find the photo in your photo library that you'd like to edit and double-click on it.
3. Click on the Edit button in the top navigation panel.
4. Click on Crop in the top navigation.

5. Click on Auto towards the bottom right of the screen.
6. Click on Done in the upper right corner.

How to manually crop in Photos for Mac

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Find the photo in your photo library that you'd like to edit and double-click on it.
3. Click on the Edit button in the top navigation panel.
4. Click on Crop in the top navigation.

5. Click on the arrow next to Aspect on the right.
6. Choose the aspect ratio you'd like. Alternatively, you can grab the corners of each photo and free crop if you'd like or click Custom to create a custom aspect ratio.
7. When you're happy with the crop, click on Done in the upper right corner.

How to manually straighten in Photos for Mac

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Find the photo in your photo library that you'd like to edit and double-click on it.
3. Click on the Edit button in the top navigation.
4. Click on Crop in the right navigation.

5. Click the dial and drag up and down to adjust it.
6. Click Done in the upper right corner when you're finished editing.

How to rotate in Photos for Mac

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Find the photo you'd like to straighten and open it.
3. Click Image in the menu bar.
4. Click Rotate Counterclockwise (or Clockwise) to turn it 90 degrees.
5. Repeat to turn another 90 degrees, for a total of 180 degrees.

You can also use the keyboard shortcuts Command-R for counterclockwise or Option-Command-R for clockwise.

How to flip (mirror) in Photos forMac

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Find the photo you'd like to straighten and open it.

3. Click Image.
4. Click Flip Horizontal (or Vertical) from the menu to mirror.

How to trim a video in Photos for Mac

Whether you synced them from your iPhone or iPad using iCloud Photo Library or imported them manually, all your movie moments are right there alongside your images. Editing, however, is a different story.

While you can trim videos in Photos for Mac, that's about all the editing you can do. For more, including titles, traditions, and other effects, you have to escalate to iMovie #sadtrombone.

If you started or stopped recording a little too early or late, it's easy to remove the excess from the beginning or ending of your video. Here's how!

1. Launch Photos on your Mac.
2. Find a video you want to edit.

3. Double-click on the video to make it fill the Photos app.
4. Hover your mouse over the video to reveal the control overlay.

5. Click on the gear icon to show options.
6. Click on Trim.

7. Drag the yellow handles on either side to trim from the beginning or end of the video.
8. Click Trim to confirm the change.

How to reset the trim on a video in Photos for Mac

If you trim a video and later regret it, don't worry, the edit is non-destructive, and the original video can easily be restored.

1. Launch Photos on your Mac.
2. Find the video you want to revert.

3. Double-click on the video to make it fill the Photos app.
4. Hover your mouse over the video to reveal the control overlay.

5. Click on the gear icon to show options.
6. Click on Reset Trim.

How to edit a video from Photos for Mac

If you want to add transitions, titles, or other effects to your video, or if you want to cut or mix it up with other videos, you'll need to use iMovie.

1. Launch iMovie on your Mac.
2. Click Create New and select Movie.

3. Click on Photos Library in the sidebar.
4. Find the video you want to edit.

5. Click on the video to select it.
6. Click on the + icon to add it to the clips in the current movie.

Then start editing away!

Once you're done, you can share the video right from iMovie or save it out and drag it back into Photos for Mac for syncing and safekeeping.

How to move an image out of Photos and into Photoshop, Pixelmator, Acorn, or other external editor

1. Launch Photos from the dock or Finder.
2. Click on the photo you want to edit.
3. Click on File.
4. Click on Export
5. Click on Export Unmodified Original.

6. Click Export after you fill out the photo information and choose where you would like to save it.
7. From your desktop, drag the photo into your favorite image editor. (Or control-right-click the icon and choose "Open with..." and then your favorite image editor.)

How to bring an edited image back into Photos for Mac

1. Save or Export the edited image back to your desktop from the photo editing app.
2. From your desktop, drag the image back into Photos for Mac (or choose the File > Import menu item and then select the image to import.)

Questions?

Let us know in the comments below!

Updated March 2019: Updated for macOS Mojave.

The Pixelmator Team latest addition to its Mac app lineup is called Pixelmator Pro and it's a significant improvement over the already-awesome Pixelmator for Mac. Here's everything you need to know!

What's new with Pixelmator Pro?

With a very minor update, Pixelmator Pro can now do something awesome with just a shift and a click. You can replace the entire background of a photo that was taken using Portrait Mode on iPhone. Just drag and drop a new background into your layers. Then, drag the background to the layer below and shift + click on the first layer to blend them. Bam! Magic! Here's a video to show you just how easy it is.

Pixelmator Pro — How to replace the background in a Portrait photo from Pixelmator Team on Vimeo.

Attention, photography lovers: Pixelmator Pro is back at it again. The Pixelmator team announced today in a blog post that a new update is currently rolling out for the popular non-destructive photo editing app for Mac, officially bringing it to version 1.1. The update, dubbed Monsoon, offers a multitude of new features like Touch Bar support, super easy web export, tutorials, and more. Pixelmator 1.1 will ideally making your editing workflow — no matter your style — more streamlined than ever.

Here's a list of some of the cool new features and improvements Pixelmator Pro 1.1 offers, according to the company's release notes:

• Export for Web: This feature allows you to prepare your photos for and export them to the web with minimal effort.
• Touch Bar support: Pixelmator Pro has finally added support for the MacBook Pro Touch Bar, giving you easy and quick access to all your tools.
• Auto Color Adjustments: Powered by machine-learning, this feature will automatically hone your photograph's white balance, lightness, hue, and/or saturation.
• Slice: The new Slice tool allows you to split your designs up into individual images, giving you the freedom to edit each section as a separate entity.
• Advanced Compression: With Advanced Compression, you can shrink image's file to the smallest possible size without losing any quality.
• Quick Export: This allows you to quickly export images with your frequently used export settings settings.
• Export Presets: With Pixelmator Pro 1.1, you can now save your go-to export settings for whatever project you're working on, speeding up the process of exporting images.
• SVG support: Pixelmator Pro finally allows you to open, edit, and export resolution-independent vector images.
• HEIF: You now have the option to export images in the High Efficiency Image file format.
• Live Previews: When you're formatting the text or adjusting layer blending within a piece, you'll now be able to see live previews before you commit to making any actual changes.
• Select Color Range: If you need to make sure your color scheme is consistent, Pixelmator Pro's got your back: you can now select both precise colors or entire color ranges.
• Tutorials: Stuck? Looking for new ways to work with your images? Just interested in picking up a few new skills? You can now learn the ins and outs of using Pixelmator Pro to its full potential with easy-to-follow video and text tutorials on the new Tutorials page.
• UI and functionality improvements: On top of adding a bunch of new features, the Pixelmator team has also made a few of the older features even better. For instance, when moving image guides, their position will now be shown in the current ruler units rather than pixels, and dragging a guide while holding the Shift key will now snap the guide to each ruler tick mark.
  • Customizable toolbar: You can now configure your toolbar so it shows you only what you need, allowing you to hide whichever buttons you choose.

In addition, Pixelmator Pro 1.1 also brings a cornucopia of bug fixes for many pesky problems that have been plaguing editors, like unexpected crashing and issues with painting. For a full list of features and improvements, check out Pixelmator Pro's updates page.

The Pixelmator team announced in a blog post today that the newer and more powerful iteration of Pixelmator, Pixelmator Pro, is finally available on the App Store. First announced along with a Pixelmator update back in September, this premium version is rumored to be "the world's most innovative image editing app." That's right — Pixelmator is coming for you, Photoshop.

Saulius Dailide, one of the founders of the Pixelmator team, noted the app's strengths in a statement:

Pixelmator Pro's interface was made for new users. It's simplistic and accessible — i.e., tools are really easy to find because there's no visual clutter — and it's dark, making it less stressful on your eyes if you work with it for long periods of time. It was also built using Swift 4, so it offers an effortless, native-to-Mac experience. It is a bit different from the Pixelmator interface though, so if you're used to the original, you will have to warm up to the Pro version a bit.

In addition to a redesigned UI, Pixelmator Pro uses machine learning integrated via Apple's new Core ML framework, allowing the software to detect and understand what's in your image. This brings a plethora of groundbreaking features, including automatic horizon detection, more realistic object removal, and intelligent quick selections. Again, this futuristic touch just shows that the Pixelmator team is definitely looking to replace Photoshop as every Mac user's go-to image editor.

As for editing and painting tools, Pixelmator Pro offers nondestructive adjustments and effects, meaning if you're not digging the direction your art is going in, you can revert to the original image or modify and delete individual changes whenever you like. You can also do things like create editing presets (and share them with others by simply dragging and dropping), experiment with new paintbrushes, choose blending modes, and so much more.

You can get Pixelmator Pro by heading over to the Pixelmator team's website or by grabbing it from the App Store here.

• Pixelmator Pro - $59.99 - Download now

The Pixelmator team has shared another video of its newest Pro photo editing app. This one explains what automatic layer naming is. Guess what? It's automatically naming a layer based on the content of the image. Nuff said. Just kidding. It's actually really awesome. Pixelmator Pro is [built with machine learning](https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/experience/), so the app can figure out what's in a photo or new layer and give it a name so you don't have to. There are even alternate similar names you can choose from. Check out the video to see more! ### October 11, 2017: Get a first look at Pixelmator Pro in action

The Pixelmator team just shared a new video showing off the newest addition to its Mac app lineup. You can get a better impression of the look and feel of Pixelmator Pro ahead of its launch sometime this fall! You can learn more about the Pixelmator Pro experience [on its site](https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/experience/). ### September 4, 2017: Pixelmator team officially announces Pixelmator Pro! Pixelmator Pro was officially unveiled today with details on what the app is, what features it has, and details about its design. Though we don't have a specific launch date at this time, Pixelmator Pro is due out this Fall.

So what is Pixelmator Pro?

Pixelmator Pro is a layer-based image editing app for Mac from the Pixelmator Team, which is the development company behind one of the best photo editing apps for Mac, and one of our favorite photo editing apps on iPad.

It's been built from the ground up with the user in mind. Whether you're an experienced photo editor or just starting out, Pixelmator Pro works with you, making it easy to learn or simple to master.

There are dozens of editing tools to help you create your perfect picture project. With things like an advanced zoom engine for ultra-close editing, Smart Scrolling so you can work outside the parameters of your immediate view, and wide color image support so you see the colors you're meant to see on the screen.

Pixelmator Pro was designed specifically with the Mac user in mind. That's why it supports iCloud syncing, multiple tabs, special gestures for the Magic Trackpad (with Force Touch), and the Touch Bar on the Macbook Pro.

Pixelmator Pro works with split-view, so you can work on your photo edits while using another supported app at the same time.

It supports all the standard image files, like JPEG, TIFF, and PNG, and it also supports Apple's new HEIF format, so you can edit photos taken on your iOS 11 and newerr iPhone or iPad.

Thanks to nondestructive editing, you can retain the original image, no matter how many changes you've made over time, including after you've closed the program.

There's now a robust set of painting tools with more than 100 dual-texture brushes, a customizable eraser, dozens of color options and shades, and a whole lot more.

There are more than 40 filter effects so you can quickly change the look and style of an image with a single click. There are also dozens of unique effects, like blur, distortion, tiling, and more.

Pixelmator Pro has an advanced layout tool that includes Alignment Guides, Smart Spacing, and Smart Sizing, which makes it incredibly easy to create graphics with different shapes, text, and more.

One of the most interesting features of Pixelmator Pro is it's use of machine learning for enhanced editing, making your editing process faster and more efficient. It makes it possible to automatically name layers, straighten photos, and remove objects from a scene while adding matching landscapes.

What's the difference between Pixelmator Pro and Pixelmator?

The most noticeable difference is the design. Pixelmator Pro is a complete redesign from its predecessor, using a single-window interface that is much more intuitive to Mac users than Pixelmator's floating window design.

It has a more streamlined toolbar, which makes it easier for you to access the editing tools you need much more efficiently.

Less noticeable, but the most notable difference is all the additional editing tools that Pixelmator Pro comes with. It's like Pixelmator extreme.

How can I get it? How much does it cost?

Pixelmator Pro is available in the Mac App Store for $59.99. You can grab it for yourself by clicking the link below.

• Pixelmator Pro - $59.99 - Download now

Any questions?

Do you have any questions about Pixelmator Pro? Put them in the comments and we'll update this article with everything new we learn about it.

The Photos app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac is fast, convenient, and chock full of great features to help you manage your images. But if you don't have your devices on you, it can be hard to show off your latest vacation photo or 4K video exploration.

Luckily, if you use Apple's iCloud Photo Library service, you can access every image or video you've ever uploaded or taken straight from a web browser. You can even organize and arrange photos in great detail: All you need is a connection, your Apple ID, and iCloud.com!

• How to access and view photos in iCloud Photo Library on the web
• How to hide the sidebar in Photos on iCloud.com
• How to upload photos to Photos on iCloud.com
• How to add a photo or a video to an album in Photos on iCloud.com
• How to share images or video in Photos on iCloud.com
• How to download a photo or video from Photos on iCloud.com
• How to delete a photo from Photos on iCloud.com
• How to recover old photos and videos from Photos on iCloud.com

How to access and view photos in iCloud Photo Library on the web

You can view your entire iCloud Photo Library on iCloud.com: You need only to sign in.

1. Go to iCloud.com in any web browser (you might need to sign in).
2. Click on the Photos icon from the main menu.

Note: The first time you load iCloud Photo Library on the web, it might take some time. If you see Preparing Library..., be patient and come back a bit later once Apple has finished processing your photos. Once you've opened your Photos library for the first time, you can leave iCloud.com and your library will continue to populate to the web, so don't worry. Once it's done, your entire photo library will appear and subsequent load times will be much faster.

How to hide the sidebar in Photos on iCloud.com

1. Go to iCloud.com in any web browser (you might need to sign in to your iCloud account first).
2. Click on the Photos icon from the main menu.

3. Click the sidebar icon in the upper left corner.
4. Click it again to make it re-appear.

How to upload photos to Photos on iCloud.com

If you need to, you can manually upload photos to your iCloud Photo Library using iCloud.com.

1. Go to iCloud.com in any web browser (you might need to sign in).
2. Click on the Photos icon from the main menu.

3. Click the Upload Photos icon in the upper right corner. It looks like a cloud with an arrow in it.
4. Click on the photos or videos you would like to upload.

5. Click Choose.

How to add a photo or a video to an album in Photos on iCloud.com

iCloud.com also lets you manage your photo and video albums, just as you would on Photos for iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

1. Go to iCloud.com in any web browser (you might need to sign in).
2. Click on the Photos icon from the main menu.

3. Click the Add to an Album icon in the upper right corner. It looks like a plus sign.
4. Click on the album you would like to add your photos or videos to.

How to share images or video in Photos on iCloud.com

Just like on your iOS device or Mac, Photos for iCloud.com lets you share images and video with your friends and family.

1. Go to iCloud.com in any web browser (you might need to sign in).
2. Click on the Photos icon from the main menu.

3. Click the Share icon in the upper right corner. It looks like a box with an arrow coming out the top of it.
4. Click the platform you would like it shared with, ie Facebook, mail, etc.

How to download a photo or video from Photos on iCloud.com

If you need a standalone copy of an image or video you took, you can grab it from iCloud.com at any time.

1. Go to iCloud.com in any web browser (you might need to sign in).
2. Click on the Photos icon from the main menu.

3. Click the Download selected item icon in the upper right corner.
4. The photo or video will begin downloading automatically.

How to delete a photo from Photos on iCloud.com

When you delete photos from iCloud.com, they'll also be deleted on your other iCloud-connected devices.

1. Go to iCloud.com in any web browser (you might need to sign in).
2. Click on the Photos icon from the main menu.

3. Click the Delete icon in the upper right corner. It looks like a trash can.
4. Click Delete on the prompt that appears on screen.

How to recover old photos and videos from Photos on iCloud.com

1. Go to iCloud.com in any web browser (you might need to sign in).
2. Click on Photos.

3. Click on Recently Deleted in the sidebar.
4. Click on the photos or vidoes that you want to recover. Hold down the Command key on your Mac's keyboard while clicking if you want to select multiple items.

5. Click Recover.

Other questions about iCloud Photo Library on the web?

Let us know in the comments below!

Updated February 2019: Updated information regarding how to recover photos on iCloud.com. Serenity Caldwell contributed to an earlier version of this guide.

The Photos app for Mac lets you easily and conveniently organize and search for your images and videos, and the People album and Places let you find the folks you live in the places you love.

Here's how to use People and Places in Photos for Mac!

• How to create a new People profile
• How to merge People into one profile
• How to manually add a picture to a People profile
• How to name or rename a People profile
• How to favorite a People profile
• How to view a slideshow of a People profile
• How to select a specific key photo for a People profile
• How to remove a picture from a profile
• How to un-favorite a People profile
• How to remove a People profile entirely
• How to find Places in the Photos app
• How to view photos in Places in the Photos app
• How to change a specific photo's location in the Photos app

How to create a new People profile

If you don't see a profile that you want to add, you can do so manually on Mac.

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Select the picture that has the person's face you want to create a profile for.
3. Click on the Info button on the top right side of the Photos window. It looks like an i with a circle around it.

4. Click the Add button next to Add Faces.
5. Relocate the tag circle to the face of the person you want to create a profile for.
6. Click on Click to Name.

7. Name the person. If the name is in your contacts, it will appear in the suggested list.
8. Click the Close button in the info window when you're done.

9. Click on the People album in the sidebar under Library.
10. Select the new People profile.
11. Click on Confirm Additional Photos to see if the Photos app has automatically registered any additional pictures with that person in it.

You may have to wait a bit for the Photos app to update before you can confirm additional photos. If, after updating, the Photos app still doesn't recognize a person's face to add to their profile, you can manually add a picture to a People profile.

How to merge People into one profile

You might have already noticed that there are multiple profiles for the same person in your People album.

If you created a profile on Mac and on your iPhone, they may not properly merge when you sync both devices. You can manually merge profiles.

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Click on the People album in the sidebar under Library.
3. Click on one profile to select it.

4. Command-click on another profile so you've selected both.
5. Right- or control-click to open the option menu.
6. Click on Merge [number] People.
7. Click Yes to confirm that these are the same person and you want to merge the profiles into one.

How to manually add a picture to a People profile

The Photos app may not have been able to identify pictures with the same person in them that are in your People album. You don't have to wait for the Photos app to identify and add a picture to a People profile. You can do that manually!

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Select the picture that has the person's face you want to add to a People profile.
3. Click on the Info button at the top left side of the Photos window. It looks like an i with a circle around it.

4. Click the Add button next to Add Faces.
5. Relocate the tag circle to the face of the person you want to create a profile for.
6. Click on Click to Name.

7. Name the person. If the name is in your contacts, it will appear in the suggested list.
8. Click the Close button in the info window when you're done.

Once named, the photo will be added to the person's profile in the People album.

How to name or rename a People profile

If a profile is unnamed or has a name but it's the wrong one, you can manually name or rename it.

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Click on the People album in the sidebar under Library.
3. Double-click on the profile you want to name or rename.

4. Click the name or Unnamed at the top right corner of the profile window.
5. Type in the name you want to use. If the person is in your contacts, it will appear as a suggested name.

6. Click on Next.
7. Click on Done to confirm that this is the new name you want associated with that person.

How to favorite a People profile

Got a favorite person you want to see pictures of all the time? You can put them at the top of the People album section so you can find them super easily.

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Click on the People album in the sidebar under Library.
3. Click on the heart on the profile you want to favorite.

The favorited profile will move to the favorites section at the top of the page.

How to view a slideshow of a People profile

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Click on the People album in the sidebar under Library.
3. Double-click on the profile you want to view the slideshow for.

4. Click on the Play button at the top left of the Photos window.

5. Select the style of slideshow you want.
6. Click Play Slideshow.

How to select a specific key photo for a People profile

Apple automatically selects a photo as the key image for a person's profile, but you can always pick a better one.

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Click on the People album in the sidebar under Library.
3. Double-click on the profile you want to change the key photo for.
4. Select the photo you want to use as the key photo (don't double-click it). Remember, it will only show the face of the person, not the entire picture.
5. Right or Control-click on the photo.
6. Click on Make Key Photo from the drop-down menu.

The face tagged as the person in the profile will now be the key photo in the People album.

How to remove a picture from a profile

Sometimes, Apple gets it wrong and will assign a photo to a person's profile when the person is not actually in the photo. These steps are also good for pictures when a person is not the focus of a photo, so you don't want it in the profile.

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Click on the People album in the sidebar under Library.
3. Double-click on the profile you want to remove a photo from.
4. Select the photo you want to remove (don't double-click on it).
5. Right or Control-click on the photo.
6. Click on [name] is not in this photo.

Unfortunately, you can't remove all of the names from a photo at once; you'll have to follow the steps above in each profile a photo is associated with.

How to un-favorite a People profile

So, your BFF is no longer your BFF, and therefore no longer your favorite. No problem!

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Click on the People album in the sidebar under Library.
3. Click on the heart on the profile you want to un-favorite.

The person's profile will move back down with the rest of the not-so-special People profiles.

How to remove a People profile entirely

So, not only is your BFF not your BFF, but you really don't want to look at their face anymore. You can get rid of a profile you or the Photos app has created.

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Click on the People album in the sidebar under Library.
3. Select the profile you want to remove (don't double-click on it).
4. Right or Control-click on the profile.
5. Click on Remove this Person.

That profile will ... poof ... disappear from the People album. The photos won't be deleted from your Photos app, though. You'll have to delete the photos from your library.

How to find Places in the Photos app

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Click Places in the left menu bar.

A map will appear showing all the photos you have taken around the world.

How to view photos in Places in the Photos app

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Click Places in the left menu bar.

3. Click on the photo location you would like.
4. Double-click on the photo if you would like to see a larger version.

How to change a specific photo's location in the Photos app

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Click Places in the left menu bar.

3. Click on the photo location you would like to change.
4. Right click or hold Control and click on a photo .

5. Click get info.
6. Click the location that appears at the bottom of the menu.

7. Type the new location of the photo. Your photo will now appear in Places on a different area of the map.

Questions?

Let us know in the comments below!

Apple will be discontinuing its first-party photo printing services for photo projects. The service allowed you to order photo prints, albums, photo books, and calendars directly from the Photos app on your Mac. While you can still place orders, a message that pops up in macOS 10.13.6 suggests that users download a project extension to order prints and albums in the future, as Apple's service will end after September 30, 2018.

To fill the void you can use apps like Mimeo Photos, WhiteWall, and Shutterfly all offer support for Photo Projects, and allow you to order photo books, prints, and more with the images in your Mac's photo library. You can find all of these apps on the Mac App Store right now.

• Mimeo Photos - Free - Download Now
• WhiteWall - Free - Download Now
• Shutterfly Photo Books - Free - Download Now

WWDC 2018 brought a lot of fun, new announcements to the table (or to your iPad, iPhone, and Mac, really), but what about Photos specifically?

If you're wanting to learn a little bit more about what's coming for Photos, then keep on reading: here's what you need to know about Photos and RAW import!

What's new with Photos?

One thing that was announced at WWDC was Improved import, making it easier than ever to import photos and videos from your professional camera on the go.

There haven't been a ton of details as to how it'll technically be improved, but we'll update you once we know more.

You can soon import and manage RAW photos on your iPhone and iPad, and even edit on your iPad Pro!

This is fantastic if you're someone who wants more creative control over your images, or someone who likes to edit with more accuracy and control while on the go.

It is worth noting that RAW photo support isn't necessarily new for iOS: it was introduced back in iOS 10.

What do you think?

Are you excited about all the new updates coming with iOS 12? Let us know what you're most pumped for in the comments down below!

With Photos for Mac, all the pictures and videos you've taken on your iPhone or iPad, or imported into iPhoto or Aperture, will always be available to you on any of your Macs, as will any future pictures and videos you take or import, including your DSLR images, even in RAW!

Add to that automatic, intelligent grouping based on time and place, and face detection, non-destructive editing, and the ability to order prints, books, and more, and Photos for Mac makes for the ultimate picture and video app for the mainstream.

Here's your ultimate guide to setting up and using it!

How to get started with Photos for Mac

Photos is your one-stop shop for just about everything you'd want in a photo organization app. You can store, edit, share, and more in Photos for Mac, and all you have to do is dive in and get started. Here's how!

• What's new in Photos for Mac in High Sierra
• How to set up and start using Photos for Mac
• How to import your Lightroom library into Photos for Mac
• How to import pictures and folders into Photos for Mac
• How to set up and use multiple libraries in Photos for Mac
• How to use Photos for Mac with multiple Macs
• How to set up and use external libraries with Photos for Mac
• How to save space with "optimize storage" in Photos for Mac
• How to import photos from your digital camera to a specific folder on Mac

How to get started with iCloud Photo Library

iCloud Photo Library aims to deliver on the promise of having all your photos available on all your devices all of the time. To accomplish this, iCloud Photo Library works with Photos for Mac as well as with Photos for iOS and iCloud.com, as the glue that holds everything together. Shoot a video on your iPhone, take a picture with your iPad, import from your DSLR on your Mac, and all of it goes up to Apple's servers and is made available on all your other devices. Part backup, part sync, part storage optimizer, if you let it, iCloud Photo Library can make micromanaging your pictures and videos a thing of the past.

• iCloud Photo Library: Explained
• iCloud Photo Library and Photo Stream: What's the difference?
• Should you use iCloud Photo Library?
• What iCloud Photo Library storage plan should you choose?
• How to set up iCloud Photo Library on your Mac
• How to back up iCloud Photo Library
• How to delete pictures and videos from iCloud Photo Library
• How to use iCloud Photo Library while offline
• How to use iCloud Photo Library with iOS and iCloud.com

How to find and manage your pictures and videos in Photo for Mac

Photos for Mac uses the same hierarchy as Photos for iOS — intelligently grouping images and videos into moments, collections, and years. That lets Photos for Mac show you small moments in time and space, like yesterday at the park, but also collections of moments marked by larger changes, like that party across town or that week at the beach, and even an entire year all at once. That way you can quickly zoom out, drill down, or scrub through to find exactly the photos and videos you want to look at, edit, or share. And all it takes is a few clicks and swipes! Of course, you can also find by faces, location, keywords, and more!

• How to use memories in Photos for Mac
• How to use Places in the Photos app on Mac
• How to use Faces in Photos for Mac
• How to add pictures and videos to albums in Photos for Mac
• How to organize albums and folders in Photos for Mac
• How to search for pictures and videos in Photos for Mac
• How to use smart folders in Photos for Mac
• How to get EXIF, location, and metadata info in Photos for Mac
• How to add and edit title, description, and keywords in Photos for Mac
• How to delete, recover, and eradicated pictures or videos in Photos for Mac

How to edit your pictures and videos in Photos for Mac

From magic wand, to basic color, light, and black & white tweaks, or full, granular control over exposure, saturation, intensity, and more. You can also rotate, flip, crop, and straighten, remove redeye, touch up blemishes, and more. Photos for Mac has everything you need to make your pictures look exactly how you want. What's more, all the edits are non-destructive, so if you don't get something perfect the first time, you can change it again whenever you like, or even go right back to the original. Combine that with the large screen, and editing photos on the Mac isn't just easy, it's accessible to everyone.

• How to adjust light, color, and more in Photos for Mac
• How to access histogram and advanced adjustments in Photos for Mac
• How to apply filters in Photos for Mac
• How to automatically crop and straighten in Photos for Mac
• How to manually crop in Photos for Mac
• How to manually straighten in Photos for Mac
• How to rotate in Photos for Mac
• How to flip in Photos for Mac
• How to retouch pictures in Photos for Mac
• How to use external image editors with Photos for Mac
• How to edit and trim videos in Photos for Mac
• How to use Markup in Photos for Mac

How to share pictures and videos from Photos for Mac

Share directly via iCloud, Mail, Messages, or AirDrop, or socially with Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo, or Flickr. Either way, you can do it quickly and easily right from Photos for Mac. Simply find the picture or video you want to share — or multiple pictures or videos — choose the way you want to share them, and you're good to go. Thanks to sharing extensions, other services can plug in as well. It's the fastest, easiest way to get your pictures and videos from where they are to where you want them to be.

• How to set your desktop picture in Photos for Mac
• How to share pictures and videos from Photos for Mac
• How to use iCloud's Family Sharing with Photos for Mac
• How to access iCloud Photo Sharing in Photos for Mac
• How to add people to a shared photo album with Photos for Mac
• How to like or comment on pictures and videos in a Shared Photos Stream with Photos for Mac
• How to order prints in Photos for Mac
• How to create books, cards, and calendars in Photos for Mac

Questions?

Do you have a question about Photos for Mac? Let us know in the comments below!

Got a family photo that you'd love to look at every time you turn on your Mac? You can use Photos for Mac to set your desktop picture for you!

Setting your desktop is as simple as selecting the photo you want to use and clicking the Share button in the toolbar, then selecting the "Set Desktop Picture" option.

How to set your desktop picture in Photos for Mac

1. Open Photos on your Mac
2. Click the Share Selected Photos icon in the upper right corner

3. Click Set Desktop Picture
4. You can adjust the layout of the desktop photo from your System Preferences.

What's your desktop background?

Are you someone who prefers to set your desktop background picture as a photo with pals, or do you prefer a super cool design you found online or a screenshot from your favorite video game? Let us know what your desktop background in the comments below!

Updated February 2018: Everything's current for the latest version of Photos for macOS High Sierra!

Photos for Mac lets you share photos and videos with pretty much any social network and app you can find. Whether you're looking to post something on Facebook, share directly to Macs, iPhones, or iPads with AirDrop, or add to a shared Photo Stream, Photos makes it easy to share with just a couple of clicks.

Here's what you need to know about sharing pictures and video in Photos for Mac.

• How to share a single image or video with Photos for Mac
• How to share multiple images and videos at once with Photos for Mac
• How to use iCloud Photo Sharing and create a shared photo album with Photos for Mac

How to share a single image or video with Photos for Mac

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Find the image or video you want to share and open it.

3. Click on the Share button in the upper right hand corner.
4. Choose the method you'd like to use to share it.

5. Fill out any necessary info and send it on its way!

How to share multiple images and videos at once with Photos for Mac

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Select the images and videos you'd like to share. Select multiples by holding down the command key.

3. Click on the Share button in the top menu bar, it's off to the right.
4. Choose the method you'd like to use to share it.

5. Fill out any necessary info and send it on its way!

How to use iCloud Photo Sharing and create a shared photo album with Photos for Mac

Apple's iCloud service includes iCloud Photo Sharing, which lets you share images and video with friends, family, and colleagues on an iPhone, iPad, Mac, PC, or Apple TV. While technically considered part of iCloud Photo Library, iCloud Photo Sharing exists outside of the service: You don't have to use iCloud Photo Library to share your images, and shared albums don't count toward your iCloud storage.

Best of all, creating shared albums is simpler than uploading images to Facebook or Instagram, and safer, too: Your images and video stay private between your group, and you can take the album down at any time. If you want to reach a wider range of people, you can even create a public iCloud.com website to host your images for anyone with the link to view them.

iCloud Photo Sharing: The ultimate guide

Questions?

Let us know in the comments if you have any more questions about sharing pictures and videos using Photos for Mac.

Updated February 2018: All steps and screenshots have been updated for the latest version of Photos for macOS High Sierra.

Markup is Apple's extension for adding text, callouts, shapes, and more to images and documents and, with macOS Sierra, it's now built right into Photos for Mac. That means you can quickly take a snap shot, add an arrow, circle an area of interest, drop in some text, and then send it to a friend, co-worker, or post it up on the internet. All in just a few seconds!

• How to find the Markup editor in the Photos app
• How to draw on your photos with the Markup editor
• How to change the thickness or texture of your lines with the Markup editor
• How to change the color of your lines with the Markup editor
• How to add shapes to your photos with the Markup editor
• How to add a border to your photos with the Markup editor
• How to adjust border color with the Markup editor
• How to add a callout to your photos with the Markup editor
• How to add text to your photos with the Markup editor
• How to change your text format with the Markup editor

How to find the Markup editor in the Photos app

Markup is a bit hidden in the Photos app. Here's how you can find it and start editing!

1. Launch the Photos app from your dock.
2. Double-click on the photo you would like to edit.
3. Click Edit in the upper right corner of the Photos window.
4. Click the more button on the upper right of the photos window. It's a circle with three dots in it.
5. Click Markup.

6. You can now make your markup edits on your photo.
7. Click Save Changes on the top right of the window when you're happy. Your edited photo will appear in your library.

How to draw on your photos with the Markup editor

Add your own shapes and flair to your photos by doodling a little! If you draw certain shapes, they will also re-form into a cleaner cut version of that shape. Try drawing stars, hearts, arrows, and more!

1. Launch the Photos app from your dock.
2. Double-click on the photo you would like to edit.
3. Click Edit in the upper right corner of the Photos window.
4. Click the more button on the upper right of the photos window. It's a circle with three dots in it.
5. Click Markup.

6. Click and drag on the photo to draw or write on it.
7. Click Save Changes on the top right of the window if you're happy with your markup. Remember that this will save changes to the original photo. You can, however go back into Markup and remove your markup, but it's best to make a copy of the original and mark it up.

You can now draw and add your doodles to your photo.

How to change the thickness or texture of your lines with the Markup editor

1. Launch the Photos app from your dock.
2. Double-click on the photo you would like to edit.
3. Click Edit in the upper right corner of the Photos window.
4. Click the more button on the upper right of the photos window. It's a circle with three dots in it.
5. Click Markup.

6. Click the Shape Style button. It looks like three horizontal lines that get bigger.
7. Select the thickness or the texture you would like to use.
8. Click Save Changes on the top right of the window when you're happy. Your edited photo will appear in your library.

You can then go about drawing or writing on your photo.

How to change the color of your lines with the Markup editor

1. Launch the Photos app from your dock.
2. Double-click on the photo you would like to edit.
3. Click Edit in the upper right corner of the Photos window.
4. Click the more button on the upper right of the photos window. It's a circle with three dots in it.
5. Click Markup.

6. Click the Text Style button, which looks like an uppercase A.
7. Click the colored bar.
8. Click a color to select it.
9. Click Save Changes on the top right of the window when you're happy. Your edited photo will appear in your library.

Then go about drawing or writing on your photo.

How to add shapes to your photos with the Markup editor

You can either draw your shapes, or add them to your photo with just a few simple clicks. You can also adjust the color and size/shape of the image by clicking and dragging to edit.

1. Launch the Photos app from your dock.
2. Double-click on the photo you would like to edit.
3. Click Edit in the upper right corner of the Photos window.
4. Click the more button on the upper right of the photos window. It's a circle with three dots in it.
5. Click Markup.

6. Click the Shapes button from the menu. It's next to the pen button.
7. Click the shape you would like to select. It will automatically be added to your photo.
8. Click and drag the blue dots to adjust the shape until you're happy with how it looks.
9. Click Save Changes on the top right of the window when you're happy. Your edited photo will appear in your library.

How to add a border to your photos with the Markup editor

Add a faint black or a colored border to your images to switch up your regular editing routine!

1. Launch the Photos app from your dock.
2. Double-click on the photo you would like to edit.
3. Click Edit in the upper right corner of the Photos window.
4. Click the more button on the upper right of the photos window. It's a circle with three dots in it.
5. Click Markup.

6. Click the Shapes button in the menu. It looks like a square and circle.
7. Click the rectangle inside a rectangle option at the bottom left of the menu.
8. Click and drag the blue dots to adjust the borders to your liking.
9. Click Save Changes on the top right of the window when you're happy. Your edited photo will appear in your library.

How to adjust border color with the Markup editor

1. Launch the Photos app from your dock.
2. Double-click on the photo you would like to edit.
3. Click Edit in the upper right corner of the Photos window.
4. Click the more button on the upper right of the photos window. It's a circle with three dots in it.
5. Click Markup.

6. Click the Shapes button on the left of the menu. It looks like a square and circle.
7. Click the rectangle inside a rectangle option at the bottom left of the menu that appears.
8. Click the Fill Color button. It's a white square with a red line through it.
9. Click the color you would like your border to be. Your border will automatically become that color.
10. Click Save Changes on the top right of the window when you're happy. Your edited photo will appear in your library.

How to add a callout to your photos with the Markup editor

Callouts are a great way to add an emphasis to a certain area of your photo. Markup editor makes adding callouts easy-peasy, rending the use of a third-party editing app useless. Here's how to use them in the Photos app!

1. Launch the Photos app from your dock.
2. Double-click on the photo you would like to edit.
3. Click Edit in the upper right corner of the Photos window.
4. Click the more button on the upper right of the photos window. It's a circle with three dots in it.
5. Click Markup.

6. Click the Shapes button on the left side of the menu. It's a square and circle.
7. Click the callout button on the bottom right of the menu that appears. It looks like a lowercase 'a' with a circle around it.
8. Click and drag the blue dot to adjust the size of the callout.
9. Click and drag the green dot to adjust the magnification.
10. Click Save Changes on the top right of the window when you're happy. Your edited photo will appear in your library.

How to add text to your photos with the Markup editor

Adding a little bit of text can be a really great way to edit without cluttering up your photo with additional bells and whistles.

You can also change your font type and color to match the rest of the photo better.

1. Launch the Photos app from your dock.
2. Double-click on the photo you would like to edit.
3. Click Edit in the upper right corner of the Photos window.
4. Click the more button on the upper right of the photos window. It's a circle with three dots in it.
5. Click Markup.

6. Click the Text button. It looks like an uppercase 'T' in a box.
7. Click inside the text box to type in it.
8. Click and drag the blue dots to change the size of the text box.
9. Click Save Changes on the top right of the window when you're happy. Your edited photo will appear in your library.

How to change your text format with the Markup editor

1. Launch the Photos app from your dock.
2. Double-click on the photo you would like to edit.
3. Click Edit in the upper right corner of the Photos window.
4. Click the more button on the upper right of the photos window. It's a circle with three dots in it.
5. Click Markup.

6. Click the Text button. It looks like an uppercase 'T' in a box. This will create a new text box.
7. Click the Text Style button. It looks like an italicized uppercase A.
8. Click the font name and click a font to change it.
9. Click the colored bar and click a color to choose your text color.
10. Click Save Changes on the top right of the window when you're happy. Your edited photo will appear in your library.

In this menu, you can also adjust font size, alignment, and bold, italics, and underlining.

Questions?

Let us know in the comments below!

Updated February 2018: Redid every screenshot and rewrote some instructions to reflect the latest version of Photos for macOS High Sierra.

Apple's smart learning integrated system in iOS and macOS works fantastically in the Photos app. It identifies landscapes, animals, colors, and people's faces. It's quite incredible how well the facial recognition software works. Even if someone is in costume, the software is able to determine who it is.

You can add faces to your People album, where you can easily find them when you're looking for just the right pictures for your photo collage. In iOS 10 and macOS Sierra, you'll have to use a workaround to get your people to sync across devices, but in iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra, the process becomes automagic.

• How to sync faces between devices in macOS High Sierra and iOS 11
• How to sync faces between devices in macOS Sierra and iOS 10
• How to remove faces from your People album in macOS High Sierra and iOS 11
• How to un-sync people between devices in macOS Sierra and iOS 10

How to sync faces between devices in macOS High Sierra and iOS 11

Apple has finally solved the face syncing problem in iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra. No longer will you have to go through 20 steps for each face in order to sync between Macs. No longer will you have to perform keyword searches to find those faces on your iPhone. Thanks to a robust update to iCloud Photo Library. People albums will be synced across your iPhone, iPad, and Mac automagically.

So you literally don't have to do anything. All of your faces will begin syncing automatically when your device is plugged into power and the Photos app is not in use (Mac) or your device is locked (iPhone and iPad).

Sit back and enjoy the ride.

How to sync faces between devices in macOS Sierra and iOS 10

In older versions of Photos on Mac, iPhone, and iPad, syncing between devices has been a problem. It's not an actual feature of iCloud Photo Library or any other iCloud syncing. You have to manually create Smart albums and sync keywords in order to be able to view specific people on your various devices. It's a complicated workaround, but it does the trick.

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Click on People under Albums section in your sidebar.

3. Select a person that you want to sync across your devices.
4. Click on Show All in order to see all photos identified as that person.

5. Select all photos in the person's album.
6. With the photos still selected, click on Window in the menu bar at the top of your screen.
7. Select Keyword Manager.

8. Select Edit Keywords.
9. Click the Add (+) button in the bottom left corner of the Keyword Manager window.

10. Select the newly created Untitled keyword.
11. Click on Rename.
12. Enter the person's name.
13. Click OK.

14. Click on the person's name now listed in the Quick Group section. All of the photos that were selected will be tagged with the keyword.
15. Click on the Add tool at the top right side of the Photos window.

16. Select Smart Album in the drop down menu.
17. Name the Smart Album after the person.

18. Select Keyword in the first section of the conditional rules.
19. Select Is in the second section of the conditional rules.
20. Select the Name in the third section of the conditional rule.
21. Click on OK.

The photos, filtered by the person's name as a keyword, will appear in the Albums section in the sidebar of your Photos app on all other Mac computers. You can repeat these steps with every face you want to sync across your devices.

Smart Albums are not supported in iOS 10. In order to find the faces you've added on your Mac, search for the keyword you created for the name.

1. Launch the Photos app on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Tap the Search icon in the upper right side of the screen. It looks like a magnifying glass.
3. Type in the first few letters of the name of the person you are looking for.
4. Tap the search result for the keyword of the name.

Note: In my experience, if you type in the person's entire name, the keyword search disappears. Just type in the first few letters.

It's not perfect, but it will do until you can update your operating systems to macOS High Sierra and iOS 11.

How to remove faces from your People album in macOS High Sierra and iOS 11

Oh, it's so easy to do. Since everything syncs across all devices, you only have to do it once per face on one device.

1. Launch the Photos app on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac.
2. Select People from the Albums section.
3. Select a person.
4. Scroll down to the bottom of the album and select Remove from People Album.

This will sync across all of your devices and the person will be hidden in your People section.

How to un-sync people between devices in macOS Sierra and iOS 10

If you decide that you don't want to have a particular person's face saved as a Smart Album or keyword in Photos anymore, you can un-sync their pictures by removing albums and keywords.

1. Open the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Right or Control + Click on the Smart Album of the person's name you created.
3. Select Delete Smart Album.
4. Select Delete to confirm that you want to delete the Smart Album.

5. Select Keyword Manager.
6. Select Edit Keywords.
7. Select the Keyword name you want to remove.
8. Click the Remove (-) button in the bottom left corner of the Keyword Manager window.
9. Click OK to confirm that you want to remove the keyword.
10. Click OK to close the Keyword Manager window.

If you want to remove a person from the People section of the Photos app on Mac, Command + click on a face. The face will automatically become hidden.

Any questions?

Do you have any questions about syncing faces across your iPhone, iPad, and Mac in macOS Sierra and iOS 10 or macOS High Sierra and iOS 11? Put them in the comments and we'll help you out.

You've probably snapped some truly memorable photos and captured some awesome video, but it's probably been buried beneath thousands more over the years. That's why Apple made Memories. It bubbles up your favorite events in Photos for Mac, complete with music, transitions, related content, and more!

Here's how to navigate and get creative with Memories in the Photos app on Mac.

• How to find Memories in the Photos app
• How to watch a Memories slideshow in the Photos app
• How to change your slideshow theme in Memories in the Photos app
• How to change your slideshow music in Memories in the Photos app
• How to view all photos that are in your Memories' slideshow
• How to see who was in a Memory
• How to add a Memory to your favorite Memories
• How to delete a Memory
• How to show an album as a Memory

How to find Memories in the Photos app

1. Launch the Photos app from your dock.
2. Click Memories on the menu on the left of the screen.

You will now be able to see all of your available Memory slideshows.

How to watch a Memories slideshow in the Photos app

1. Launch the Photos app from your dock.
2. Click Memories on the menu on the left of the screen.

3. Double-click the Memory you would like to watch.
4. Click the play button. It looks like a triangle.

5. Click Play Slideshow at the bottom of the menu that appears.

How to change your slideshow theme in Memories

You can customize and change your Memory theme depending on the type of story your photos tell. It's a really great, simple, creative way to showcase a certain period of time or event!

1. Launch the Photos app from your dock.
2. Click Memories on the menu on the left of the screen.

3. Double-click the Memory you would like to watch.
4. Click the play button. It looks like a triangle.

5. Click on the slideshow theme you would like to select.
6. Click the Play Slideshow.

How to change your slideshow music in Memories in the Photos app

Just like customizing the theme of your Memories slideshow, you can also change up the music!

You can either choose your Memories music from your iTunes, or from their list of chosen songs.

1. Launch the Photos app from your dock.
2. Click Memories on the menu on the left of the screen.

3. Double-click the Memory you would like to watch.
4. Click the play button. It looks like a triangle.

5. Click Music.
6. Select the song you would like to play in the background of your Memory slideshow.
7. Click Play Slideshow.

How to view all photos that are in your Memories' slideshow

Get a better idea of how many photos and videos will be in your Memories' slideshow by taking a peek at all your pictures.

1. Launch the Photos app from your dock.
2. Click Memories on the menu on the left of the screen.

3. Double-click the Memory you would like.
4. Click Show More.

All of the photos that are in the specific Memory will appear.

How to see who was in a Memory

1. Launch the Photos app from your dock.
2. Click Memories on the menu on the left of the screen.

3. Double-click the Memory you would like.
4. Scroll down until you find the People section.

You can scroll left and right to see who was in the Memory.

How to add a Memory to your favorite Memories

Keep your favorite moments close and quick to access by marking your favorite Memories' slideshows!

1. Launch the Photos app from your dock.
2. Click Memories on the menu on the left of the screen.

3. Double-click the Memory you would like.
4. Scroll down to the bottom of your screen.

5. Click Add to Favorite Memories. If this is your first favorite Memory, a little icon will appear in the menu bar to the left of the screen that's called Favorite Memories.
6. Click Favorite Memories to view your favorite Memories.

To remove a memory from favorite memories, simply scroll to the bottom of the memory and click Remove from Favorite Memories.

How to delete a Memory

1. Launch the Photos app from your dock.
2. Click Memories on the menu on the left of the screen.

3. Click the Memory you would like.
4. Scroll down to the bottom of your screen.

5. Click Delete Memory.
6. Click Delete on the prompt that appears to delete your memory.

How to show an album as a Memory

1. Launch Photos from your dock or Applications folder.
2. Click on the album that you want to show as a memory.

3. Click Show as Memory.
4. Click the play button in the toolbar.

5. Click Play Slideshow to play the memory.
6. Scroll down and click Add to Memories to save the album as a permanent memory.

Questions about Memories?

Let us know in the comments below!

Updated February 2018: Updated screenshots for the latest version of Photos.

Whether you're snapping your photos with your iPad, your iPhone, or your DSLR camera, EXIF data is often stored on your images to help you keep organized and track of all your photography.

Mobile photography can even store information like your geographical location with your images, while the EXIF data essentially eats up unnecessary space with information 95% of people don't actually care about.

If you're looking to remove your EXIF data from your photos on your Mac, here are a couple of steps you can take to do so!

How to remove EXIF data from your photos on Mac

1. Download ImageOptim to your Mac.
2. Double-click ImageOptim to open the program.

3. Click and drag the image you would like to remove your EXIF data from ImageOptim. You can drag multiple images in at a time. It may take a moment or two.
4. Click and drag the image to your desktop when the process is complete.

Your image will now no longer have any EXIF data. You can check this with a few simple steps:

1. Double-click on the image that was just run through ImageOptim.
2. Click Tools at the top of the screen.

3. Click Show Inspector. A separate window will pop up on your screen.
4. Click the i icon in the circle.

The EXIF data icon should no longer appear with your image!

How do you get rid of your EXIF data?

Is there a technique that you use to easily get rid of EXIF data? Let us know how you drop that extra metadata weight in the comments below!

Updated January 2018: This article has been updated with the most recent screens and information.

This past summer, I went to Illinois to visit family, some of whom I've never even met. My second cousin brought with her a huge box of pictures that had been handed down. Some of them were monochrome photos from the mid-1800s. It was an amazing thing to see so much of my family history sitting in one box. It was also amazing that I was able to identify almost every person in each picture because my great-grandmother (and other various family members) wrote a description on the back of every single one of them.

Which got me thinking...

It's really easy to add a description to digital photos the same way my great-grandmother wrote on the back of her photos. Even better, you'll actually be able to clearly read the writing 100 years in the future.

Descriptions are worth a thousand words

Luckily, your iPhone, and pretty much any digital camera, already has some of the information you might need, like the date and time a photo was taken and the exact location (unless you've turned off Location Services for the Camera app). In the Photos app on Mac, you can also see what device you used (iPhone, Android device, DSLR camera), what settings you used, and a few other geeky photography stats.

What they don't already have is the names of the people in the photos and any other personal information you might want someone else to know about someday.

For example, the first day you met your future spouse or the first time your best friend's baby didn't cry when you held them. Photographs are time capsules, but they're meaningless if you don't also capture the importance of the moment — the reason the photo was taken.

Digital photography has made it so much easier for all of us to take great pictures and share them with each other. We don't even have to carry around a big old photo album. Since it's so easy, why not take a couple of extra minutes after your family vacation or a recent trip to the park and write down some details about why you took those pictures and who is in them. Just because you know the details doesn't mean that, someday in the future, someone else will.

How to access the Description field in Photos on Mac

So, now that I've convinced you of how important it is to add descriptions to your digital photographs, you might be wondering just how to do it. You won't be able to write descriptions on your pictures directly in the Photos app on your iPhone or iPad, but you can on your Mac.

1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Select the photo you want to add a description to.
3. Click the info button at the top of the Photos window. It looks like a circle with an "i" inside of it.
4. Click on the Description field.
5. Add in your notes.

If you do nothing else, put the name of the person or people that are in the photo. That way, they'll be identified long after you're able to do so.

Dear Apple, please add the photo info feature on iPhone and iPad

Unfortunately, Apple doesn't include the info button or the ability to add a description to pictures on iPhone and iPad. You also can't see descriptions you've added from the Photos app on Mac. So, this description feature is currently relegated to whichever app you originally added it in. Hopefully, Apple will add the info button to iPhone and iPad someday, but it's not exactly a highly requested feature.

Make your photos meaningful to more than just yourself

The time I spent with my extended family is something I'll treasure for as long as I live. Because I used the description field in the Photos app on Mac, my treasures can be talked about, related to, and re-experienced long after my memories of them have faded. Now that is worth a thousand words.

Apple's newest version of macOS, High Sierra, is bringing a some optimization, new features, and exciting changes to various parts of the software. Not only will your Mac feel like new again with High Sierra, but you'll also notice a bunch of Apple's native apps have gotten some significant upgrades.

Photos is Apple's photo filing app that you can connect to your iCloud account to organize, edit, and view all your photos and videos. Photos is getting a few upgrades with macOS High Sierra, and I'll give you a quick break down of the most significant changes!

Live Photo effects

Apple announced that iOS 11 would bring a few new effects you could add to your Live Photos, and Photos in macOS High Sierra will be able to add those same effects.

The three new effects are called Loop. Bounce, and Long Exposure and you can change them whenever you want with just a couple of clicks. Here's a quick rundown of what each effect does:

• Loop: Much like the name implies, this effect will put your Live Photo into an endless loop, so you'll be able to re-watch that moment in time over and over again.
• Bounce: If you're familiar with Instagram's app Boomerang, you'll understand how the Bounce effect works. Essentially, the Live Photo will play forwards and then backward, "bouncing" back and forth between the start and the end.
• Long Exposure: This effect will add an artificial long exposure to your Live Photo causing the images to bleed together. Long Exposure will look particularly cool with pictures that feature running water or other moving objects that have continuous movement.

Our very own Rene Ritchie took a sample of what both the Loop and Bounce effects look like and posted them on Instagram:

Live Photo editing

On top of the new Live Photo effects, macOS High Sierra also allows you to edit Live Photos in a few new ways giving you better control over how your Live Photos look.

Among the new tweaks you can make is the ability to trim your Live Photos to a shorter length, select a different key photo, and even mute your Live Photos. All these new features will be readily available in the editing menu within the Photos app.

Advanced editing tools

Probably the feature I'm the most excited about in macOS High Sierra, the Photos app will gain some seriously advanced photo editing tools, so you can tweak all your favorite shots without having to import them into different editing software.

When you take a photo into the editing menu, you'll be greeted with a ton of new editing tools that are going to allow you to modify your pictures like the pros. You can adjust the white balance, levels, curves, and definition of all your photos to give them that little added extra touch of love that turns a good photo into a great photo. Plus, you can also adjust other aspects like sharpness, noise reduction, selective color, and you can even add and adjust vignettes.

If you're used to using professional photo editing software like Photoshop, these new tools in Photos probably won't stop you from using those high-level programs; however, for the average joe, these tools are a huge upgrade from what macOS previously offered.

Permanent Sidebar

In macOS Sierra, you navigate the Photos app by use of the top toolbar and the optional sidebar, but that's all changing in High Sierra.

The sidebar will be permanent, meaning you can't hide it or make it go away. Plus, most of the functionality of the old top toolbar is now incorporated into the new sidebar. You'll use the sidebar to access your shared library, various photo albums, and projects, and it's also where you will create new albums and folders when you need.

What's your favorite new feature in Photos for macOS High Sierra?

Let us know in the comments below!

This isn't a trick: I originally set out to write a how-to about how to change your cover photo in Memories in the Photos app for iOS and macOS… but I discovered it isn't really possible.

Memories is a great new feature for the Photos app that let users view their images and video in a modern, convenient slideshow-like format. It works by randomly compiling content into algorithmically-created slideshows like "Best of the last 3 months" or "The Holidays" to give you a general overview of all the awesome images and videos you captured with the help of your iPhone.

Though more limited on macOS, Memories gives users a ton of creative control on iOS: You can change the slideshow's theme, music, content, and so much more. Unfortunately, one thing that appears to be nigh-impossible is setting a cover photo for a specific Memory. It's frustrating: You can rearrange content within the Memory itself, but not the cover photo that opens the slideshow, nor the image that represents it on the Memories page.

The most irksome part is that Apple has a version of this feature for Albums on the Mac: Right-click (or control-click) on any photo in an Album, and you'll get a dropdown that includes the option Make Key Photo. (iOS has never been able to do this, unfortunately.) But the same does not apply to Memories.

There is a way to remove your current cover photo from Memories, but it's not exactly elegant.

How to remove your current cover Photo from Memories

When Memories creates a slideshow, it automatically picks an image for its cover photo. To remove that cover image, however, you'll have to delete that image entirely. (Not just from Memories — from your library.)

On macOS, this works pretty much as designed: Go into the Memories slideshow you want to change, delete the cover photo, and the app will instantly pick another picture to take the place of the first cover photo.

But I wouldn't recommend doing this currently on iOS. In our tests, if you delete your cover photo, we've had it instantly display a big gray box where the cover photo should otherwise be shown. It's a bug, but to most users, it just feels like a plain ol' thing that happens.

Not only that, but if you run into the gray box problem, the play button disappears altogether, so you can't further edit or fix your Memories slideshow.

Fix time

At the end of the day, Memories is a really awesome new feature that gives us the warm nostalgic fuzzies without beating us over the head with the old-fashioned slideshow format. It's just really unfortunate that I can't set my cover photo on iOS without having the entire Memory implode in on itself. We've filed a bug with Apple, and hope to see Memories add a cover photo option — or, at the very least, fix its iOS troubles with deleting cover photos — in the future.

Note: We've filed this feature request with Apple. It can be found at rdar://28518000.

If you've made the switch to OS X's new Photos, you may have been frustrated with your inability to merge your photo libraries. A recently-released Mac app, PowerPhotos from Fat Cat Software, seeks to fix this issue with its latest update. PowerPhotos 1.1 allows you to merge libraries, while also helping you weed out duplicate photos and more.

When merging libraries, PowerPhotos will bring over basic metadata, including descriptions, titles, dates, and keywords. However, the app cannot bring over Faces, reversible photo edits, or manually assigned locations. You can also copy individual photos between your libraries.

In addition to merging libraries, PowerPhotos helps you do more with Photos for OS X. You can build and manage multiple libraries, quickly search your photos, and migrate both iPhoto and Aperture libraries.

You can try PowerPhotos for free, and purchase the full version of the app for $29.95. Included in that price is a license for iPhoto Library Manager, a similar app from Fat Cat that is geared towards iPhoto.

• $29.95 - Download Now

Turns out that Photos does pretty sophisticated library management; enough so that you're not duplicating space if you're migrating from iPhoto or Aperture. If you've migrated an existing iPhoto or Aperture photo library to Photos, Photos creates a brand new library structure but doesn't, in point of fact, duplicate your images. Instead it creates links to the original and preview versions of your images.

When you're looking at your Photos library in the Finder, it includes all of your original images and previews. But the images exist only in one location on your hard drive, even if you have multiple photo libraries.

Here's what Apple has to say for people anxious to pull the delete trigger:

So don't do it, even if you're tempted to.

You can still use your original photo library with iPhoto (version 9.6.1, as of this writing) and Aperture (version 3.6) after you've migrated it to Photos. Just bear in mind that any changes you make in iPhoto or Aperture will be resident only in those applications, not Photos. So if you make new image edits in Aperture or create a new iPhoto album, those will only appear in their respective apps, not Photos.

(Hat tip: Dave Sanderson)

Updated on 5/29 10AM ET to add information from Steven Levy's excellent interview with Google Vice President of Streams, Photos, and Sharing  Bradley Horowitz, and to add information about Google's high-quality photo pricing tiers.

For more on Google Photos, check out Android Central's comprehensive coverage

Google announced its new Photos service at I/O today: It looks a lot like iCloud Photo Library, but with even more perks. Automatic slideshow movies! Insta-GIFs from burst photos! Interactive stories! You can automatically search for faces, places, and things without tagging! It syncs with iOS and the web! And, oh yeah — unlimited* (if your photos are 16MB or less) storage for free. What could be better?

Well, to start, it's important to know what "free" might actually cost you, and whether you're okay with that tradeoff.

The dark side of free

As a company, Google has a lengthy history of offering free services with outrageously awesome storage capacities: Look at Gmail or Google Drive. There's a great business reason for that: free, in many cases, equals mass adoption. People love free things. One less bill I have to deal with? Sign me up!

As a result, you get an awesome service you don't have to pay money for. But what does Google get from this relationship? Data. Lots and lots of data.

When you offer a free service, you're likely to get many more people to sign up or download it than if that service was offered at a cost. Google in large part uses this data to improve and expand its services: It needs those vast user numbers to make its services the best in the world. But because the company isn't charging for its services to get those user numbers, it still has to make money — it isn't a charity.

And therein comes the potential dark side of Google's data usage, where the company pays its debts by leveraging its biggest asset: you. The millions of people who sign up for free Google services agree to terms and conditions that give the company permission to access certain subsets of any information you put online.

In plain English, that means being able to sell custom ads against your data: showing you a Nordstrom ad for shoes, for instance, because Google knows from search or web history that you looked at some yesterday, or from Gmail that you purchased heels at the store last week.

The company uses this data to sell to advertisers, and advertisers in turn get a much closer look at you, your spending habits, and your daily activities. For some people, this is a perfectly reasonable tradeoff for "free". But many others sign up for these services without ever quite realizing what they've given away.

The potential of photographic data

An image may be worth 1000 words, but image metadata may spill far more information than that, especially when applied to a Google service. According to this year's Google I/O keynote, the Photos service will offer a search function that can find people, places, and objects — all without any active tagging on the end user's part.

It does this in part by scanning your image's metadata: the location and other information your camera builds into the underlying code of your digital image. For the rest, I suspect Google is inventing its own supplemental metadata, using rapid image scans and automatic face detection as part of the company's continuous "machine learning" system. It may not be perfect at the start, but as Google gets more and more photographs to scan, it could become the most accurate auto-tagging service on the Internet.

In an interview with Medium's Steven Levy, Google Vice President of Streams, Photos, and Sharing  Bradley Horowitz talks a bit about their systems for doing this:

On one hand, that's fantastic for users: They'll have a speedy, smart search option that can help bring up the image they're looking for even if they've never written a word about it.

But, like with Gmail, this kind of technology innovation costs money: I doubt the company is making this feature available out of the kindness of its heart. Google has yet to put up its terms and conditions for Google Photos, so we don't quite know what it might do with this metadata — how the company's advertisers might be able to use or not use it — and whether you'll be able to opt-out and still use the free service.

According to Horowitz, Google has no plans to utilize this data for advertising or other means... yet:

I want to reiterate that Google's goals for using your information aren't intentionally shady: The company is trying to use your data to help you live your life. Down the line, however, targeted ads may well fit into that life. It's just a matter of what data you want to share (and potentially give) to companies for their usage.

Take Yahoo's Flickr, which offers 1TB of free photos storage: In the company's privacy policy, it notes the following:

Flickr's advertisers can not only insert ads into your Flickr timeline, but they can also use your metadata and information to customize ads for you. Hypothetically, this information-gathering could result in something like the following: Say you went to Disney World last November, and you pull up the photo album in May to give it a look through. After your tenth picture, you get an ad that encourages you to plan a trip to Disney World this fall and gives you a special coupon for it.

Helpful? Sure. Creepy? Just a bit.

It's also worth noting that Google Photos isn't entirely free in the conventional sense: Despite not mentioning it on-stage at the I/O keynote, Google's service is only free for those uploading video under 1080p and photos under 16 megapixels. Upload anything larger — say, a great DSLR shot — and if you're on the free plan, it's automatically compressed. For some, again, this may not be a problem, but those who want to back up their images at full resolution will have to pay for a plan. To Google's credit, those plans are significantly cheaper than Apple's storage options: 1TB will cost you $10 on Google to Apple's $20. For people with large libraries that won't quite fit into iCloud Photos Library or those on more of a budget, that's an incredibly appealing price.

Proceed with caution

As I've said multiple times above, I'm not going to advise people against signing up for Google Photos: Google has a lot of admirable technical goals, and it genuinely believes this kind of mass data-gathering will help achieve those goals. But the company may not be able to get the vast userbase numbers it needs to make its search services best in class without making those services free. And if they're free, Google has to pay for them in another way. Right now, Google has no plans for ads in your photos, a la Flickr, but, as Horowitz said, they're not opposed to the idea.

Apple has chosen to go the opposite route for its Photos service: The company charges for storage beyond 5GB, but underneath that is a top-tier guarantee against data-mining and unauthorized use of your personal information. But that monetary cost — atop a dozen other bills — has proved somewhat of a barrier to people looking to store their full libraries in iCloud. Google's large free tier and pricing for larger, HQ libraries is a shot across the bow to Apple in that department, and it'll be interesting to see if Apple responds come WWDC time. The service is currently being outpriced by almost every other one in the game, and it might be worth putting a few million dollars from its massive savings account toward storage to encourage new users to give it a try.

Choose your own adventure

At the end of the day, it's up to you to choose whether you're spending your money or your data on your online services. It's a personal call. I'm not going to decry Google for its practices, nor will I put Apple's iCloud Photo Library service on a pedestal. All I'm advocating for is that when you choose a photos service, you know and choose how you're paying for it. For me, that choice is simple.

Following the release of OS X 10.10.3 earlier this week, which included the new Photos app for OS X, Apple has removed iPhoto and Aperture from the Mac App Store. Both apps are now unavailable for purchase, though they can still be downloaded from the Purchases tab in the store by those who already own the applications.

While Photos will serve as the primary way to manage and edit your photos on OS X going forward, dedicated users of iPhoto and Aperture might want to hold on to those apps for right now. If you're feeling ready to make the jump, however, check out the links below for instructions on moving your iPhoto and Aperture libraries over to Photos.

• How to import your iPhoto Library into Photos for OS X
• How to import your Aperture Library into Photos for OS X

via: MacRumors

OS X 10.10.3 was released Wednesday, and with it, a brand new Photos app for the Mac, complete with support for iCloud Photo Library. Photos is the future, yes, and with its release, we won't see any more changes to iPhoto or Aperture, but that doesn't mean those apps are going away today.

You may remember that when Apple introduced iOS 8, it abruptly stopped iOS device users from using iPhoto. Opening the iPhoto app on iPhone or iPad resulted in an error message — the company forced iOS 8 adopters to use Photos instead.

Fortunately, that hasn't happened on the Mac. iPhoto and Aperture still work, and will still continue to work on OS X Yosemite. Apple's given us that much reassurance, at least.

Obviously the Mac doesn't exist in a vacuum. Apple's continuing to develop new versions of OS X and new Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that OS X developers will use to unlock new features in their own apps. There's no promise of backward compatibility with legacy apps like iPhoto and Aperture beyond Yosemite.

I've spoken to many iPhoto and Aperture users who are already looking (or have migrated) to other programs like Adobe's Lightroom, though in fairness, most of the actual photo pros I've spoken with migrated away from Aperture years ago when Apple stopped putting any sort of effort into updating it with new features.

Still, Aperture and iPhoto both work presently; in fact, Photos' share sheet includes an "Add to Aperture" function that makes it really easy to use Aperture along with Photos (I've been using it this way for the past couple of months, to do things like quick color-correction, cropping and resizing for product photos I use at iMore, for example).

The bottom line: If you're trying to "future-proof" your Mac, your best bet is to migrate to Photos and starting using it. But that doesn't mean you need to make that change today. After all, some of us have invested years in iPhoto and Aperture-based workflows. Figuring out how to integrate Photos into those workflows will likely take some time and some effort.

To that end, the iMore team has created a lot of information for you about Photos:

• How to use Photos for OS X: The ultimate guide
• How to use iCloud Photo Library: The ultimate guide

Photos for OS X does let you work with multiple libraries, but it doesn't let you import them and combine them all together into a single, unified library. At least not yet. If you have Aperture, however, you can import and consolidate multiple Aperture and iPhoto libraries there first, then get the merged library into Photos for OS X. It's a work around, but it works.

How to import multiple libraries into Aperture

1. Launch Aperture on your Mac.
2. Click on File > Import > Library...
3. Find the library you want to import. (If you don't see it, try looking in your *Pictures** folder.
4. Click on Import.
5. Repeat steps 2-3 for every additional library you want to import.

How to import your consolidated library into Photos

If you haven't setup Photos for OS X yet, you can simply select the new, combined library as the one to import when you do.

• How to setup and start using Photos for OS X

If you have setup Photos for OS X already, you can simply open the new library like any other. (And once you're sure you're happy with it, delete your old library.)

• How to work with multiple libraries in Photos for OS X
• How to delete your old library after migrating to Photos for OS X

Like the iMovie, Final Cut, and iWork re-imaginings before it, Photos for OS X has taken the bones of iPhoto and Aperture to create an entirely new photo management program.

There are feature echoes here and there from its two predecessors, but Photos is an entirely new beast: new design, new editing workflow, and an all-new way of syncing your images from device to device in iCloud Photo Library.

• How to use Photos for OS X: The ultimate guide
• How to use iCloud Photo Library: The ultimate guide
• FAQ: Everything you need to know about Photos for OS X

Welcome to the new normal

Photos on the Mac looks very little like either iPhoto or Aperture, and yet it feels effortlessly familiar to those of us who have used iOS 8 and Photos for iOS over the last seven months.

That's in large part because it borrows and expands upon the iOS 8 design language for Photos: Using clean, simplistic white space, the app divides your images up into the same Moments, Collections, and Years as on iOS. It also uses tabs at the top for Shared Photo Streams and Albums, and borrows the same editing conceits from the mobile version.

But just because the Photos for OS X interface is simplified, that doesn't mean it's lost its underlying power. The Photos team could have followed the iMovie '08 or iWork template and gutted the program to its core for this redesign, leaving out all features but the essential ones — but they deliberately chose not to. They've taken lessons from those launches, and Photos for OS X actually sports a surprisingly robust feature-set.

No, it's not Aperture. It's got a long way to go before it's ever going to be Aperture — and honestly, Apple may be ready to cede the true pro-editing market to Adobe and the like. But for the vast majority of users — beginner to prosumer alike — Photos for OS X is more than enough for your photo management needs.

The moments, collections, and years view is fun, but where Photos for OS X showcases its power is in Albums. Smart Albums and nested folders are at your beck and call, ready for you to organize accordingly. Apple's face-recognition algorithm, Faces, has been reimagined as a special sort of smart album, and sports all the same features (and bugs) as its iPhoto predecessor. There are new special smart albums, including Timelapse, Favorites, Slo-mo, and Bursts; they automatically collect images and video from those categories for your perusal.

And for the sidebar-loyal who hate the idea of managing with top tabs, Photos has you covered: Command-Option-S removes the tabs and reveals the sidebar for your quick navigational needs. There's even a Split View under Option-S where you can see thumbnails of the other images in the folder, moment, or collection you're viewing along the side of the screen.

As someone who got increasingly aggravated over iPhoto's sluggish, bloated looks and behavior, Photos for OS X feels like a breath of fresh air. It's speedy, even with 10,000+ images and videos of different sizes and shapes weighting it down, and I can run it in the background on a laptop while going about my day to day. It's intuitive: I can find images much more quickly than I could in iPhoto, and do what I need to them. And it's smart: Add in iCloud Photo Library, and I can, for the first time, have my entire library virtually at my disposal without having to worry about external drives or taking up disk space.

(Mostly) effortless management

I can go a little overboard when it comes to managing my photographs. In my pre-iPhone days, I had a carefully pruned and meticulously-arranged library, with all my events split out into special albums.

That all, unsurprisingly, went out the window when the iPhone came into my life. When you're taking hundreds of photos a month, that meticulous management becomes maddening, and eventually impossible without extra hours in the day. Especially if you wanted to keep those photos on your iPhone for later viewing.

And so, I tried cloud services, like the now-acquired Loom and Picturelife. I tried keeping everything in folders, labeled by the date. I finally ended up dumping my old iPhoto Library and every miscellaneous photo and video I could find into a Dropbox folder labeled "PHOTO MESS, CLEAN UP SOMEDAY".

That day, I am thankful to say, is here.

I first got an inkling that Photos for OS X might be something special when, in its earliest beta, it handled me throwing a gigantic Dropbox-hosted iPhoto library into it without complaint. It took a few hours, sure, but all my photos were imported. Then I tossed in sixty folders' worth of random iPhone images I'd been offloading. No complaints there, either. A few duplicates, most of which were weeded out during the import process. But at the end of the day, I had every photo and video I'd ever taken that was still available to me, all unified under one roof.

Now, unorganized, you might think that such a unification would prove disastrously messy. But though I poo-poohed Moments and Collections when I first saw them in Photos for iOS, they're a fantastic way to quickly find photos of certain events: I know when I took the photo, so, it reasons, I should be able to quickly find the photo itself. Photos's beefed-up search field is also a nice companion for quickly finding people, places, times, and keywords or filenames, though it lacks the boolean operators to make it a true powerhouse. (Of course, that's what Smart Albums are for.)

Faces remains a fun gimmick, though it has many of the same problems I encountered in iPhoto: Namely, it struggles with batch-recognition when the person in question (hi) is making non-standard faces. Or wearing glasses. But if you like manually clicking "Yes, this is this person" through the Suggested Faces section for two hours, you'll be thrilled.

Like in iPhoto, you can still add keywords to photographs; rating systems and flags are gone, but the beefed up keyword manager lets you add keywords to that effect. The new Favorites function also easily lets you flag images you want easily accessible.

Of course, Photos for OS X is just part of Apple's overall Photos equation. iCloud Photo Library, Apple's online service, opens up photo management to all your devices. And best of all: Do something once, it syncs everywhere else.

This solves one of my biggest, oldest iPhone photo management irritations: I can manage albums on my Mac and have them sync to my iPhone, and vice versa. And sync from my laptop to my desktop. For the first time, I'm not worried that I'm going to have to redo my entire management strategy over for each device I own, or worry about syncing special albums over to my iPhone via iTunes. It's all there, and it's all seamless.

Well. Mostly all there. Sadly, smart albums and Faces are currently exempt from this syncing, though I'm hoping we see that integration down the line. (And while Apple's at it, smart albums you can also edit on the iPhone wouldn't be too shabby, either.)

iCloud Photo Library

If Photos for OS X is meant to be your photography home base, iCloud Photo Library is the service that spreads those images to the world. It syncs all your photos with all your devices. It integrates iCloud Shared Streams to bring your pictures to your friends and family. And it does so in a secure, smart, and controlled manner. It's the first of iCloud's sync services that I can honestly say, in my multiple months of testing, "just works."

And as anyone who's tried to manage images online before knows, "it just works" is pretty darn important when it comes to your digital memories. Photos can't disappear. They can't be duplicated into a million copies. They have to sync seamlessly, quickly, and not send the end-user into a panic because they're suddenly missing chunks of their lives.

iCloud Photo Library isn't perfect, and it's more expensive than I'd like. But here's a quick breakdown for those who want to know exactly what they're getting into when they flip on that switch.

We've got a much more thorough piece on this matter linked below, but essentially: iCloud Photo Library is a separate service you can enable in both Photos for OS X and Photos for iOS that uploads every image you've taken or have stored on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac's library to iCloud. That includes iPhone or iPad photos and screenshots, video, and with any imported DSLR or other photos you've added to your Photos library on your Mac.

You don't need to use iCloud Photo Library to use Photos for OS X or iOS, but if you choose not to, you won't get any of its benefits: your images won't sync across devices, you can't optimize storage for your devices to save disk space, and you'll have to manually back up your photos elsewhere.

• iCloud Photo Library: Explained

After several months with Photos for OS X, iOS, and iCloud Photo Library, I'm pretty familiar with its ups and downs. Thankfully, there are far more ups and downs, at least in my experience.

It just works — really!

As I said above, perhaps the biggest bullet point in iCloud Photo Library's "pro" column for me is that, for once, Apple's iCloud team has a rock-solid "it just works" sync product. Even during my early beta-testing days, I had no issues with iCloud losing or dropping images from my library.

I had only one sync error, which came from accidentally turning iCloud off on my MacBook before it had finished syncing up that library; as a result, those half-uploaded photos disappeared from my other devices. But they remained on my MacBook, and repopulated on my iPhone and other Macs as soon as I re-enabled iCloud sync.

Now, I should caution anyone who attempts to turn on iCloud Photo Library on Day 1 of Photos for OS X's existence: I'm guessing that the relatively seamless experience I've had during the beta will be bogged down quite a bit when millions of people attempt to upload their 10,000+ photo libraries to iCloud. In general, I might suggest waiting a few days for things to calm down — I don't think you'll lose data, but you'll likely slow your internet to a crawl trying to upload massive amounts of images over several days.

You really can access your photos from anywhere — and manage them, too

Previous to iCloud Photo Library, I used Loom and Dropbox's Carousel features to keep master copies of my images. This was great for having access to my full image library, but it was only really accessible while I was online, and there was no real way to organize it beyond pre-built rough date scroll along the side. Deleting images from Dropbox's Carousel was also a royal pain — the app was built more for hiding images then deleting them.

With iCloud Photo Library, my images are accessible everywhere — and when I'm offline, I can still view low-resolution thumbnails of any pictures I haven't downloaded locally to my machine. I can even manage my library while offline: Delete an image while you're away from internet access, or add it to an album, and all of that syncs when you pop back online.

Forget having to make multiple copies of your images to edit them: iCloud Photo Library syncs your non-destructive image edits across your devices, meaning that you can start editing an image on your iPhone, finish the touchup on your Mac, or undo it all on your iPad.

All hail optimized storage

iCloud Photo Library's Optimize Storage option automatically and smartly takes a percentage of your device's storage space for high-resolution versions of your photos; any images or video that can't fit in that space are stored as low-resolution thumbnails. This space is variable, too — it doesn't take up every speck of free space you have, instead appropriating a portion of your free space to photo storage, and it adjusts smartly on the fly.

If you need to download an image stored on iCloud, you need merely to tap it; your older downloaded images will be removed from the device to make room for the new ones.

This is awesome not only for small-storage iOS devices, but also for laptops: I love being able to carry around my "entire" library on my Mac without also having to lug a 500GB external drive for that library's full-resolution Raw photos.

Secure, strong backups

While iCloud Photo Library's primary goal may be to provide you with the same library on all your devices, it also keeps a copy of that library safe and secure in iCloud using Apple's CloudKit framework. In the unlikely event of a hard drive malfunction, waterlogged iPhone, or other hardware disaster, your images will be safe and sound and ready to redownload.

For all that I like about iCloud Photo Library, it still has its flaws: For me, they aren't dealbreakers, but they might be depending on your needs.

The iCloud storage cost

Though Apple's iCloud storage costs are lower than they've ever been, they're still not as inexpensive as their rivals. Apple doesn't use advertising or data brokering to subsidize the costs of storage, but for $10/month, you can only get 500GB of storage in comparison with Dropbox or Google's 1TB, or Amazon's unlimited storage option with Prime membership.

For me, the ease of use on my iPhone and Mac outweighs the extra expense, but it still seems like a poor play from Apple if the company wants the majority of its users to use iCloud Photo Library with Photos for OS X and iOS.

You can't choose not to sync certain photos

CloudKit, the infrastructure behind iCloud Photo Library, uses 128-bit AES encryption for transit and storage, so it's secure, but even so, there may be some images you'd prefer stay offline — whether for job or personal reasons. Unfortunately, iCloud Photo Library is an all-or-nothing affair: If you want those photos offline, you'll have to move them out of Photos for OS X or iOS to do so.

It's tied into Photos for OS X and iOS

If you're a die-hard Lightroom user, iCloud Photo Library won't help you — it's designed solely to work with the Photos for iOS and Photos for OS X. And given that Photos for OS X doesn't currently support a good external editing workflow, that may end up being a dealbreaker for anyone who wants to do pro-level editing but have those edits sync across their iOS devices.

There's also the question of reference libraries: Officially, iCloud Photo Library doesn't support syncing with a referenced (external) Photos for OS X library, because of the potential for sync conflicts. There is a (cumbersome) workaround that involves multiple libraries and turning iCloud Photo Library on and off, but it may not be worth it for people who regularly need access to referenced images.

For me, iCloud Photo Library is an excellent way to bring my images and video to all my devices, albeit a slightly-more-expensive one. It boasts impressive sync capabilities, offline photo access, and easy management and backup, even for gigantic libraries. But it also has a few caveats that, while not dealbreakers for me, may be for others. For those unsure what camp they're in, hopefully I've cleared up iCloud Photo Library's pros and cons to help you make the decision that's right for your workflow.

Slide to edit

Let's get this out of the way: Photos is not Aperture or Lightroom. Photos is not trying to be Aperture or Lightroom. If you need a professional photo tool, Photos is not the tool for you. Look elsewhere.

That said, Photos has an impressive amount of power packed inside a relatively simple-looking editing screen. It may not be a professional editing tool, but it feels light-years beyond iPhoto.

On the surface, that's not particularly evident: Open the Edit menu, and you'll see six basic tool options at your disposal: Enhance, Rotate, Crop, Filters, Adjust, and Retouch.

The first three work almost identically to their iPhoto counterparts, offering a quick one-touch button for tweaking brightness and contrast in your photo; rotating your image; cropping it to your liking; or applying a simple retouching clone brush. Filters, a carry-over from Photos for iOS, is similarly simple, letting you choose one of eight Instagram-like filters for changing your photo's tone.

It's in the Adjust menu, however, where the real power lies. At first glance, it looks like Photos for OS X has taken the same three slider-based edit controls found in Photos for iOS — Light, Color, and Black and White — and left it at that.

Those sliders are powerful in their own right for beginners, giving them easy tools to quickly change the light and color of their photo without having to know anything about advanced editing tools. But they're not what more advanced users need — and Apple knows that.

That's why, like in iOS, you can click the down-arrow next to each adjustment to expand their individual counterparts. Suddenly, where there were three tools, you now have thirteen sliders at your disposal.

But Apple didn't stop there. You can also add a host of different adjustments to your editing workspace, including a histogram, levels, and white balance, along with sliders for sharpening, defining, reducing noise in, and vignetting your image.

No, these tools won't replace a full-featured editing program like Lightroom. And frustratingly, Photos doesn't currently support opening its files in an external editor, so you'll have to copy and recopy any image you want to bring elsewhere to tweak.

But for the vast majority of users, these tools are more than enough for them to get what they need done. I'll actually go a step further and say that for newer photography enthusiasts, these tools might help them learn more about the composition of their images and how to properly edit them.

The sliders provide for control and understanding in a way that complex editing screens just don't; they're less intimidating, and as such, give users a chance to play and grow with their controls, adding them as necessary. It's such a smart way to offer tools for the vast majority of users without making anything too simple or too complex, and one of Photos's great triumphs.

One rather curious omission: Photos for OS X doesn't support action extensions, as does its iOS counterpart. It would have been an excellent way to integrate third-party editing software into the app, but I'm assuming it got dropped due to a general lack of polish time. I'm really hoping we see it pop up in future versions of Photos, however.

And, of course, all these edits sync with iCloud — so you can start editing on your iPhone, pick up on your Mac, and share it on your iPad. And if you don't like what you've edited, you can hit reset and start all over again, thanks to Photos's non-destructive adjustments.

The sharing life

We take pictures for two primary reasons: for our own personal memories, and to show off to other people. As such, it seems kind of ridiculous that we keep the vast majority of our images locked up on our machines, hidden in backup after backup — you could have taken the funniest cat picture the internet has ever seen, only for it to be lost amidst 2000 other pictures.

Photos doesn't want that to happen. Photos wants your images to get to whomever you want them to — whether that's your iCloud Photo Sharing family, Facebook friends, Flickr buddies, Twitter birds, iMessage chums, AirDrop amigos, email dudes, print pals, or more.

The app, like its iOS counterpart, has an entire section dedicated to iCloud Photo Sharing: Here, you can share entire albums privately with your friends and family (or publicly on the web), as well as comment on and like images from their shared streams.

The other major way for your photos to leave Photos for Mac is with the Share sheet: Click the share button, and you can send images to iCloud, Mail, Messages, AirDrop, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and any other service that builds a third-party share extension.

Interestingly, there's even an "Add to Aperture" option in there for folks who still have Aperture installed; Apple representatives previously told iMore that the Share sheet wouldn't allow third-party "Open in"-type tools, but who knows? Maybe we'll see an option to "Send to Photoshop" — even if that's just sending a copy of the photo to the program, instead of a true external editing option.

There's one other area Apple is focusing on when it comes to sharing: printing. This isn't particularly surprising: iPhoto has had the capability to print photos, cards, calendars, and books for quite a few years, and Photos seems the natural successor to take on such projects.

Books and cards have been revamped, here, with new layouts and easier controls; prints, too, get a refinish, with a new option for automatically-sized images, which will print at three heights to a number of widths. Primarily designed for panoramas, I can see auto-sized prints also being useful for people who like to hand-crop their images rather than be contained to specific sizes.

In the age of Fracture and digital frames, paper prints may not have the luster they once had — but there's still a market for it, and Apple is happy to provide.

The bottom line

After years of iPhoto's bloat, ever-increasing iPhone photo management issues, and random folders of images scattered within my computers, Photos for OS X is a breath of fresh air. It's speedy. It's smart. It syncs with my other computers and iOS devices. The app has eliminated the cruft of iPhoto without taking away its magic and accessibility to beginners, and iCloud Photo Library offers a photo management revolution for those who have previously found themselves siloed on each individual device.

It's not perfect. Faces is still disappointing in its facial recognition. Duplicate photo recognition only happens during import; there's no way to trigger a "find duplicates" command in your library at will. (If you have iCloud Photo Library enabled, it theoretically performs automatic duplicate merging every time your device connects to iCloud, but those who have chosen not to enable it are out of luck.) And search, although promising, could use work.

Nor is it a true Aperture replacement. There aren't any brushes, to my great disappointment. The loupe is gone, replaced with Multitouch pinch-to-zooms, as are some of the more advanced management features. And you can't edit your images in an external editor, or properly work with a reference library unless you disable iCloud Photo Library.

But as app reimaginings go, it's the best Apple has ever accomplished. Photos for OS X feels solid and steady in its 1.0, and the features I'm missing are more wish-list items than dealbreakers. This won't be true for everyone, of course. But for the general Mac population, this is the photo management tool they've been looking for. And I can't wait to see what Apple does from here.

The third major update to OS X Yosemite adds the new Photos app. Photos for Mac lets you manage your iCloud Photo Library, lets you browse, organize, and edit your photos, syncing your changes over to your other devices. Find out more about the app in our Photos for Mac FAQ.

OS X 10.10.3 also adds support for Google's two-step verification and adds Spotlight suggestions to Look Up. There are also more than 300 new emoji characters. You can check out the full set of changes in OS X 10.10.3 in the list below:

The OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 update includes the new Photos app and improves the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac.

With Photos you can:

• Browse your photos by time and location in Moments, Collections, and Years views
• Navigate your library using convenient Photos, Shared, Albums, and Projects tabs
• Store all of your photos and videos in iCloud Photo Library in their original format and in full resolution
• Access your photos and videos stored in iCloud Photo Library from your Mac, iPhone, iPad, or iCloud.com with any web browser
• Perfect your photos with powerful and easy-to-use editing tools that optimize with a single click or slider, or allow precise adjustments with detailed controls
• Create professional-quality photo books with simplified bookmaking tools, new Apple-designed themes, and new square book formats
• Purchase prints in new square and panoramic sizes

It's easy to upgrade your iPhoto library to Photos - just launch the app to get started. To learn more about Photos, please visit: https://www.imore.com/e?link=https%3A%2F%2Fapple.sjv.io%2Fc%2F221109%2F473657%2F7613%3FsubId1%3DUUimUdUnU31033%26subId2%3Ddim%26u%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.apple.com%252Fmacos%252Fphotos%252F%26ourl%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.apple.com%252Fosx%252Fphotos%252F%253Fafid%253Dp239%25257C159229%2526cid%253Daos-us-aff-ir%2526subId1%253DUUimUdUnU31033%2526subId2%253Ddim&token=Bs-KPgC6

This update also includes the following improvements:

• Adds over 300 new Emoji characters
• Adds Spotlight suggestions to Look up
• Prevents Safari from saving website favicon URLs used in Private Browsing
• Improves stability and security in Safari
• Improves WiFi performance and connectivity in various usage scenarios
• Improves compatibility with captive Wi-Fi network environments
• Fixes an issue that may cause Bluetooth devices to disconnect
• Improves screen sharing reliability

The update weighs in at 1.52GB, and can be found in the Updates section of the Mac App Store right now.

• Everything you need to know about Photos for Mac
• How to use Photos for OS X

Apple sent out an email to Aperture owners this week reminding them that as soon as Photos for OS X goes into general distribution, Aperture will no longer be available for purchase from the Mac App Store. The usual gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair erupted soon afterwards. I have just one thing to ask people who are complaining about this: Why are you so anxious to get rid of Aperture?

Look, Aperture is end of life, we all know that. Apple said that last June at WWDC, and the email they sent out this week says that they won't be selling new copies either. But read what Apple said carefully:

So you can't buy new copies of Aperture. What won't change, however, is that you can still download Aperture if you already own it. I've checked with Apple and they confirmed this for me. So if you're already using Aperture, you can continue to download and use it.

Apple introduced Aperture late in 2005, providing professional photographers with a professionally-priced photography cataloging tool that provided functions like raw image support, non-destructive editing and other capabilities. Apple improved it over time and lowered the price, eventually migrating Aperture to the Mac App Store, opening the software to be used by many other Mac users whose needs exceeded what iPhoto could do.

Some of us have been using Aperture for a decade, since before there were Intel-based Macs. Some of us have invested hundreds, if not thousands, of hours in Aperture workflows to make our photos look great and to better organize large volumes of photos that we've shot, imported and scanned into our Macs.

Obviously Apple hasn't committed to keeping Aperture alive indefinitely. If Apple discontinues APIs in future versions of OS X that are necessary for Aperture to work, Aperture will die. It's wise to plan for the future by developing a workflow that's not Aperture-dependent.

But that future isn't today, or even tomorrow. If you're going to be using Yosemite for a while, you can count on Aperture to continue to work. Even when Photos for OS X is out in the world, you'll be able to continue using Aperture to your heart's content.

I've been working with Photos since the first beta version of 10.10.3 was released, and I find it to be a mostly adequate replacement for iPhoto, with considerably more robust and fast iCloud integration, which is nice. But Photos isn't a replacement for Aperture.

The way I use Photos is for general-purpose importing from DSLRs and my iPhone. Everything I shoot gets dumped in there. I like to use Aperture to catalog and tweak the product photos I shoot for iMore, so I use Photo's share sheet to export to Aperture. The photos are copied to Aperture's own, separate database, where I can manipulate them as I see fit.

The rest of the photography software business hasn't stood still, of course. Adobe's Lightroom is a popular alternative for photographers, made even more enticing to Aperture users when Adobe said it would double down on Lightroom in light of Apple's announcement.

So if you're using Aperture today, you can continue using Aperture even after Photos makes its debut. Sure, go ahead and plan for the future, figure out the best tool for what you need to do. But stop acting like someone from Apple is going to show up at your house and tear Aperture from your Mac with their bare hands the moment Photos for OS X is released. It's not happening.

At WWDC 2014, Apple showed off not just a new Photos for Mac app, but an entirely new approach to photo and video management. Combined with Photos for iOS 8 and iCloud Photo Library, it promised to store all your visual assets safely up on Apple's servers and make them available across all your devices — iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV — and via iCloud.com on the web. It also promised both speed, storing your most frequently accessed photos and videos locally and in full fidelity, and storage efficiency, leaving your less frequently accessed photos and videos on the cloud, a tap or click away.

More importantly, Apple promised all of this as a part of something greater — photos and videos as core components of the company's operating systems.

Now, some seven months later, Apple has seeded the first Photos for Mac beta to developers and testers. There will be a public beta at some point, and a full release this spring, so this is really just the tip of the Photos iceberg. But in the meantime, we've got an FAQ written by iMore's Serenity Caldwell to tide you over along with some of my first impressions, and an answer to the question we've been asking most — in a post-iPhoto, post-Aperture world, how well will modern Mac owners be served by the Photos app?

Yosemite born

Let's just get this out of the way: Photos for Mac is gorgeous. It's an OS X Yosemite app through and through, with all the translucency and vibrancy that implies. At its most minimal, it gives you just the new, streamlined toolbar with options to step through to navigation, scale thumbnails; tab through Photos, Shared, Albums, and Projects views; add new albums, smart albums, calendars, cards, slideshows, and prints; share with popular services; and search.

You can open the sidebar, if you like, for easy access to shared folders, personal albums, and projects. You can also open the split view so you can work on one photo but still see related thumbnails beside it. And in the toolbar, you'll find the info pane, keyword manager, and more. None of it clutters up the interface the first time you launch it, but it's all available to you at any time.

Making an app accessible to everyone is an almost-impossible task. If it's simple enough for new users, it might not be useful enough to professionals. If it's powerful enough for pros, it might be impenetrable to beginners.

Apple is solving that problem through depth: The designers put the simplest controls on top where everyone can find them, and layered more sophisticated controls beneath them, where the more adept will seek them out. And it works exceptionally well. It lets the app's interface scale from the incredibly simple to the remarkably powerful.

With Photos, Apple's made one that will legitimately serve the needs of most people, from beginner to serious enthusiast.

From iPhoto and Aperture

Apple has been straightforward about the future of the iPhoto and Aperture apps — there isn't one. Both remain compatible with OS X Yosemite, which means you'll be able to keep using them for as long as you're using Yosemite, maybe longer, but neither will be receiving updates. They can't. They're not of the post-iPhone, post-iCloud world. They need to be rebooted, and Photos is that reboot.

For most people, the transition will be transparent. Photos will launch and open your existing iPhoto or Aperture library, and all your stuff will copy over. Flags, color labels, and stars don't exist in Photos, but Photos will create keywords for them. Events from iPhoto and Stacks and Projects from Aperture will put into albums. Photos won't get everything, like Aperture's custom fields, but Apple's made sure it gets as much as can fit in its model.

Because the Photos app references the same master image files, you won't need extra disk space to copy over your library. That's great news for people with gigs and gobs of photos and videos.

Yes, that also means you can go back and open iPhoto or Aperture and your photos will still be there as well. They're not in sync, however, so if you add or edit files in Photos, those additions and edits won't be reflected in iPhoto or Aperture, and vice versa. And if you want to say goodbye to your old library, you can trash it with no effect on your new one.

If, for some reason, you have multiple libraries — iPhoto for your iPhone, and Aperture for your DSLR, for example — you'll be asked to choose which library you want to use for Photos. If you want to merge the libraries, do it in Aperture first, then open Photos and bring the combined Aperture library in.

You can open and maintain multiple libraries in Photos just like you could in iPhotos and Aperture, so more complex setups remain possible.

Fast and findable

Photos is lightning fast. When it scrolls, it scrolls. Longtime iPhoto and Aperture users will appreciate just how fast and smooth it is. It reminds me of the first time I used Safari on the iPhone: rather than render as I went and make me wait, Safari kept up with me and rendered when I paused. When you get that close to real-time, the illusion of direct manipulation locks in, and everything just feels right. Photos just feels right.

My library isn't especially large, but Apple claims they've built Photos to handle large libraries with ease. I look forward to testing that.

The views — years, collections, and moments — will be immediately familiar to anyone who's been using Photos for iOS. Years shows just what the name implies — 2015, 2014, 2013, and so on back to the oldest year indicated in the metadata of the oldest photo. Collections are large groupings of photos and videos broken up by significant changes of time or place — a few days or a week, or a major change in location (like that trip to Aruba). Moments are smaller groupings: a day, or trip to the park.

Years lets you easily soar out to take view across time, while collections and moments let you drill down and find specific sets or items. You can gesture between photos and videos, as you'd expect, or use the keyboard just like iPhoto.

You can create folders, and Smart Albums are supported, so you can automatically have images included based on their matching (or not matching) one or more criteria. For example, all photos that match a keyword, or all photos taken at a certain aperture, or all sorts of different filtering combinations are possible.

Faces, which identifies people in your photos, also remains and is accessible via the albums view. What's more, search has been amped up to work like it does on iOS 8, but with even more query types including date, location, title, caption, album, filename, face, keyword, and more.

If you've never organized your library, all of this help make Photos more manageable. If you've carefully organized your library, it helps make Photos fly.

Editing depth

There's no video editing offered in Photos, but that's what iMovie is for. There's also no support for external editors — at least not yet. (Third-party developers will be able to hook into the Share menu, which might allow images to exit Photos, but may not allow them to return without reimporting.) There's plenty of photo editing to be found, though, and like with the interface, Apple has used depth to allow the tools to be both simple and powerful.

If all you want is a quick fix, the magic wand tool is still there. If all you know is you want a picture to be lighter or darker, more or less colorful, or some kind of black and white, the main adjustment sliders will let you eyeball just that. If you want to precisely control exposure or shadow, saturation or contrast, intensity or grain, you can do that too. If you want to add a white balance or noise reduction, or levels, they can all be turned on.

It's not just adjustments either. You can automatically align against the horizon, apply filters, retouch, and remove red eye. It's not everything Aperture provided — no brushes, for example — but it's both far more and far better than iPhoto.

Best of all, everything is non-destructive. You can apply the magic wand, see what changes it makes to the sliders, adjust them, and then come back hours, days, or months later and adjust them again, revert certain ones, or revert right back to the original. And those changes sync, like the photos themselves, to iCloud and across all your devices.

Projects plus

In case you were worried Apple would abandon bookmaking and other print projects with the reinvention of the Photos app — don't be. Books, calendars, cards, and prints are all still here, and are all quicker and cleaner than ever.

They're also modernized. There are square books now for the Instagram age, and super-wide prints for all those panoramas. You can even hit auto and let Photos handle everything from squares to panos without you having to laborious set each and every one up individually.

I'm not going to throw out the "magical" word, but if I were, here'd be the place for it.

There's a bird's eye view for bookmaking, to help you get a better sense of overall context; downloadable themes so you can keep your projects looking fresh; and multiple recipient settings so everyone can enjoy the end results without you having to do a lot of extra work.

For those who prefer digital to physical, slideshows have also been improved, with new themes, new transitions, and full integration with the new collection views.

To the cloud

By itself, Photos for Mac is a solid entry to the mid-level photo/video management space. Connected to iCloud Photo Library, however, it becomes something more. iCloud Photo Library is still in beta, like Photos for Mac, but the architecture and implementation looks really smart and really solid: It takes all the photos and videos stored in your library and uploads them to Apple's servers so your past is not only safely backed up, but available to you on all your Apple devices and via iCloud.com. That's everything you've ever taken and loaded into iPhoto or Aperture going back to the very first photo.

iCloud Photo Library will then keep uploading all the new photos and videos you take going forward, so everything stays safe and in sync into the future. That includes not just the photos, but also the non-destructive edits and metadata like favoriting. Make a change on your Mac, and it's reflected on your iPhone at the speed of the internet. Make a change on your iPad, and the bits race back to your Mac.

If you're not a fan of "the cloud", you can also choose to live completely offline, and just store and manage your photos locally on your Mac. iCloud Photo Library is entirely optional.

If you do use iCloud Photo Library, you can choose to keep all your originals on your Mac, or to optimize storage and keep all your originals on iCloud and only the most frequently used on your Mac.

The promise of "nearline" or "nearly-online" is thus: The stuff that you access the most is kept locally, so that it's always immediately available; the stuff you access the least is stored on servers so that it's not clogging up your disk space. It blurs the lines between device and cloud, but in a way that gives you the best of both approaches. Lose your internet connection? No worries, the things that are most important to you are still there. Running out of storage? No worries, the things that are less important are kept on Apple's servers until you need them.

The only drawback is the size of that cloud storage. Everyone gets 5GB of iCloud for free when they create an Apple ID, but that 5GB goes fast — especially because it's not just used for photos, but for backups, files, and other data. You can buy additional storage, and it's much cheaper than it used to be, but it's still not as cheap as most competing services like Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, or Dropbox.

Current monthly pricing is 20GB for $0.99, 200GB for $3.99, 500 GB for $9.99, and 1TB for $19.99. I'm currently on the 500GB plan and, even with multiple device backups, I have room to spare.

If iCloud space is an issue for you, you can keep on using My Photo Stream, which stores and syncs 30 days or 1000 photos for "free" (it doesn't count against your iCloud storage). It's not going anywhere. But... it's not going anywhere.

iCloud Photo Library is a better model. It feels like the way things should work. Hopefully Apple runs the numbers and finds a way to make it even more accessible.

Back to the future

Apple is fearless when it comes to dropping the old in favor of the new. That applies not only to hardware, but to software as well. iMovie. Final Cut Pro. iWork. Each was rebooted, painfully for many, but in ways that not only made them better able to meet the needs of the future, but also to meet the needs of a far wider range of people. They went from power tools to empowering tools.

With Photos, Apple has done just that. They've scrapped the past, started over, and made something for the future. Something that is born of — and can grow with — the age of multiple connected devices. They've also done something more: They've learned from previous reboots, and are releasing Photos much further along the feature return curve.

There are a few things still missing, some that no longer make sense, some that may still return. But even in beta, especially when combined with Photos for iOS 8 and iCloud Photo Library, Photos for Mac feels not only mature but wise.

Even after only playing around with it for a day, and only in pre-release form, and only for this quick preview, for the first time, I feel like I don't have to be concerned about what to do with my photos. And that's an amazing feeling.

One consequence of upgrading to iOS 8: You're no longer going to be able to use the iOS version of iPhoto. From here on out you're supposed to use Photos. What's worse, it may be a very painful transition if you invested in some of iPhoto's features. Read on for details.

It's an ex-parrot

Apple's made no secret of its intent to move away from iPhoto. The company announced at WWDC this past June that iPhoto and Aperture are being discontinued on the Mac in favor of a Mac version of it Photos app, which is due in early 2015. Still, iPhoto on the Mac will still work when OS X Yosemite is released — Apple has pledged to keep it running at least through OS X 10.10.

By comparison, upgrading to iOS 8 is the end of the line for iPhoto on iOS altogether. Trying to launch the application after upgrading your device with iOS 8 simply produces an error message: "iPhoto is not supported on iOS 8. Your photos and image adjustments will be preserved in Photos."

You're allowed to migrate your iPhoto library to Photos or cancel, but using iPhoto under iOS 8 simply doesn't work.

Potentially painful transition

Photos in iOS 8 includes new editing tools that were clearly inspired by much of iPhoto's functionality, but the transition isn't seamless. If you used iPhoto to create Photo Books, Web Journals and Slideshows, for example, they're converted into regular albums in Photos. The text and the layouts from those projects is out the window.

Apple has detailed the move in a support note posted to their web site.

Migrating your iPhoto library adds any photos that aren't already in Photos, and image adjustments made in iPhoto are included. What's more, iPhoto image adjustments made to photos synced from iTunes will be retained, after a fashion: A duplicate of each photo is made in Photos, with adjustments applied. There are some other gotchas, too, outlined at the Apple support note I linked above.

This transition from iPhoto to Photos is the latest example of a recurring philosophy we see practiced by Apple: The company is willing to impose some short-term discomfort on customers to suit their long-term vision.

In fairness to Apple, digital photography has changed a lot since iPhoto was developed, even iPhoto for iOS. It never played well with iCloud integration and syncing — those features were bolt-on and poorly integrated. Forcing a change to Photos enables Apple to streamline its customers' digital photo workflow.

This sure ain't magical

The problem is that Apple hasn't done a great job — or any job, really — of communicating these changes to us, their customers. Most people jumping on iOS 8 are just finding out about this now, after it's too late to do anything about it. After all, you can't downgrade to iOS 7 once you've upgraded to iOS 8. Upgrading your iOS device to a new operating system is, and long has been, a one-way trip.

Apple pays a lot of lip service to the customer experience. The phrase we've heard Tim Cook use over and over again is "surprise and delight." In this context, "surprise and delight" is worse than a joke. And there's certainly no magic in it either, another favorite descriptor of Cook's. It's an insult.

Some iPhoto users have used the app to remember and share special moments of their lives — vacations, kids' birthdays, weddings, anniversaries. Apple has suddenly made iPhoto obsolete, and worse, its replacement won't allow us to keep everything we've made.

The photos are intact, at least. If we've bothered to delve into using any of iPhoto's other features besides photo cataloging and adjustments however, we've essentially wasted our time. Apple is either unable or unwilling to make it work.

Short term pain, long term gain

If you're a Mac user, you've seen Apple's "short term pain for long term gain" gameplan in action fairly recently, when Apple radically revamped its iWork apps in late 2013 — Pages, Numbers and Keynote got major new builds that sacrificed features and functionality in order to improve document workflow with their iOS counterparts. Apple has done it with iMovie, too. Not to mention Final Cut, its pro video editing software.

It's never easy, and it's going to cause frustration for some of us who have invested a lot of time and effort to produce great content using iPhoto, but unfortunately Apple's not giving us any choice in the matter. It's iOS 8 or bust.

Your thoughts?

Are you mad at Apple for disallowing iPhoto to work in iOS 8? Are you happy with the transition? Tell me what you think about this latest twist in the comments.

Photos for iOS 8 brings significant enhancements to the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, including the new iCloud Photo Library, favorites, smart search, smart editing, custom photo and sharing extensions, and PhotoKit so developers can get in on al the action. Apple announced it at WWDC 2014, and then they did something unexpected — they announced Photos would also be coming to the Mac. Rebuilt from pixel to bit, Photos for Mac won't arrive with OS X Yosemite this fall, but will arrive sometime early next year. So what does all of this mean for existing iPhoto and Aperture customers, and, going forward, photography on the Mac?

iPhoto, Aperture, and OS X Yosemite

The first and most important thing to understand is that, when OS X Yosemite ships this fall, both iPhoto and Aperture will continue to work just like they do on OS X Mavericks today. Both will still be available in the Mac App Store. Existing iPhoto and Aperture libraries will all still open, and existing iPhoto and Aperture tools will continue to "just work". Everything will be right in the universe.

Next year, after the new Photos app for Mac is released, Apple will remove iPhoto and Aperture from the Mac App Store. You'll still be able to keep and run your old copies, but Apple will no longer be updating or improving them. However, at some point in the future, they'll be outdated enough you'll want to move on.

Moving from iPhoto and Aperture to Photos for Mac

Come early next year, you'll be able to migrate your existing Aperture library to the new Photos app for Mac. When you migrate, all your albums, folders, keywords, and captions will move from Aperture to Photos. All the non-destructuve edits you've applied to your Aperture photos will be preserved in Photos, and preserved non-destructively. Likewise, if you use iPhoto, you'll be able to migrate your library over to the new Photos app as well. (Aperture and iPhoto libraries are already compatible, and have been shareable since versions 3.3 and 9.3 respectively.)

In terms of organization, Apple has shown that the same, automatically generated Years, Collections, and Moments views that currently exist in Photos for iOS will be implemented in Photos for Mac, as will Albums. How existing iPhoto Events get mapped, be it to Moments, to Albums, or to something else, remains to be seen.

Shared photos will keep track of all your Shared Photo Streams, likely including the automatic shared family album set up as part of Family Sharing on iOS 8.

There's also a Projects tab in Photos for Mac, though we'll have to wait and see how that maps to projects as they currently exist in iPhoto and Aperture. Likewise, Apple hasn't said how "special" albums like Faces or Places will be handled, but hopefully more information will be made available about that as Photos for Mac gets closer to release.

The important part here is that, wherever you're accustomed to finding a photo or video in Photos for iPhone or iPad, that's where you'll be able to find it in Photos for Mac. When it comes to learning and remembering, less really is more.

Bringing Photos to the iCloud

iPhoto and Aperture are, by modern standards, old apps. They were built in an era before iOS and before iCloud and while they've had some interface and compatibility layers bolted on, they were never rebooted the way iMovie and Final Cut Pro were in terms of interface, or Pages, Numbers, and Keynote were in terms of compatibility. Not until now.

With Photos, Apple is saying pictures and video — our memories — are so important they're going to make them an integral part of iOS, OS X, and iCloud at the system level. They're going to make Photos not just an app but a service for everyone on every Apple device.

Hundreds of millions of people own an iPhone, iPod touch, and/or an iPad. Increasingly, more and more of them own a Mac as well. Apple wants to make sure that anyone with both an iOS device and a Mac gets a seamless experience with their photos, same as they already get with everything from their iCloud mail to their iTunes music to their iWork documents.

To accomplish all this, Apple is introducing iCloud Photo Library. Built on their new CloudKit service, iCloud Photo Library will make sure every picture and video you take, import, save, or otherwise bring into Photos is synced to all of your Apple devices, including iCloud.com, along with its organizational information and any and all non-destructive edits you've applied to it.

What's more, all your pictures and videos will be stored (and backed up) on Apple's servers, at full resolution, in its original format — including RAW. Apple is using "nearline storage" for this, so the most recently added and accessed pictures and videos are kept locally, optionally at device-optimized resolution, and immediately available to you. Older and less frequently accessed pictures and videos are kept online so they don't end up consuming all your local storage, but can be re-downloaded quickly any time you want them.

Think about it as a hybrid drive, but instead of HD/SSD fusion, it's local/cloud fusion. It's concept that's been employed in data management for years, and it's something Apple's been doing for music for a while with iTunes Match. While it might not sound as important on the Mac as it does on smaller capacity iPhones and iPads, MacBooks are mobile devices too. A MacBook Air starts at 128GB of SSD storage, so photo library size matters on OS X as well.

Making Photos smart

Apple has only provided a brief demo of Photos for Mac. Exactly how much of Photos for iOS 8 makes its way into Photos for OS X Yosemite, and what Mac-specific features are implemented remains to be seen. However, based on what was shown off at WWDC 2014 — understanding that features in pre-release software can and will change — auto-enhance, crop, filters, redeye removal, retouch, and rotate tools are all in place.

Being able to find your photos is also a high priority for Apple. The ability to hit a heart-shaped button to favorite a photo or video is visible in the demo, as is a search box. Photos for iOS uses a similar search box to access smart filtering — nearby, one year ago, favorites, and home — that let you quickly find photos and videos geotagged close to your current location, taken a year ago from the current date, those you've hit the heart button on, and those geotagged to where you live. It also includes the new smart search feature which lets you find photos and videos based on based on months of the year, city and other location names, and the titles of your albums. Both make just as much sense on the Mac.

Apple did demonstrate the same smart editing tools on the Mac as on iOS. With them you can perform quick adjustments to light, color, and black and white, or to dive deeper into exposure, highlights, shadows, brightness, contrast, and black point, into saturation, contrast, and cast, and into intensity, neutrals, tone, and grain.

Depending on your time and interest in a particular photo, you'll be able to go from a single click to a couple of sliders to detailed, granular adjustments. And any and all changes you make will be non-destructive and synced via iCloud Photo Library to all your other devices.

Extensions are the new plugins

The Extensibility feature coming to both OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 is like a new, more visible, more accessible version of plugins. They're system wide but can also be content specific. With sharing extensions, social networks and upload services like Pinterest will be able to appear inside the default Share Sheet alongside Messages, Mail, Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr. Any social network or upload service that wants to can make a share extension so, very literally, the cloud's the limit when it comes to options. Whatever you choose to use, you'll likely be able to find for Photos.

Although Apple hasn't said anything about photo-specific extensions for OS X, they have said action extensions will be there, and it's hard to imagine a plugin-like architecture for filters and transformations won't evolve around Photos as well.

Bottom line

With Apple bringing Photos to the Mac, and with the eventual retirement of iPhoto and Aperture to follow, some level of concern is inevitable. For casual photographers Photos will almost certainly end up being a better, more consistent, more approachable app to use than anything that's come before. For professional photographers, however, the answer won't be as clear.

I've been using Photoshop for decades and Aperture for years. I don't use Lightroom because, for me, it doesn't make as much sense as either Photoshop for pixel-level editing or Aperture for more general editing and organization. Rather than try to force myself into moving from Aperture to Lightroom pre-emptively, I'm going to use the time afforded by Aperture's OS X Yosemite compatibility to wait and see. I'm going download Photos for Mac when it arrives early next year, I'm going to give it a fair try, and I'm going to determine for myself if and how much it can replace Aperture for my needs. My guess is quite well, because a seamless experience between iOS and OS X is incredible valuable to me.

Other people's needs will be different, of course. Just like when iWork was relaunched with compatibility between iOS, OS X, and iCloud, some features were lost. A few of those, including major ones, have since been added back. Extensibility support might take the edge off. Developers could come up with extensions that not only fill gaps but add entirely new capabilities. However, while Photos will likely end up being better for the vast majority of people, it may not end up being better suited for everyone, no more than iPhoto or Aperture are today.

The important part is this — Photos for Mac isn't stuck with an aging codebase from a bygone era, struggling to keep up. It's new and built for now. Apple is working on it and it'll benefit from all the effort and attention they're pouring into not only the Mac but iOS and iCloud as well. Photos is their new foundation for picture and video handling.

Photos is the future.

Summer vacations are just made for the great outdoors. Whether you're in your backyard, at the local park, at a national park, or hiking halfway around the world, there's an amazing amount of plants and flowers, bugs and birds, rocks and streams to see and enjoy. Best of all, if you have your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, the Camera app means you really can bring it all home with you. What's more, if you have iPhoto on your Mac, you can have even more fun. You can have a real book printed and bound on real paper so you can share it with your family and friends. For kids — or kids of all ages — it's a great project that not only lets you relive your adventures but record them for everyone!

Getting started with iPhoto on Mac

Before you even launch iPhoto, make sure you shoot a bunch pictures. Shoot the trip to get there. Shoot again cool signs you see along the way. Shoot the name of the place or park you're visiting. All of that will help you establish where you are. Then just shoot all the amazing things you see. Get some photos that show the landscape, the trees, and the surroundings. Get some shots that show the people you're with. Make sure they take some shots of you too! Don't be afraid to get in close. Really close! Capture all the sights and textures and things that shine in the sun, glisten in the rain, creep, or crawl, or fly, or swim around you. Nature is wondrous diversity. Capture as much of it as you can!

Once you've gotten more than enough photos, and you're back home safe and sound, you're ready to share!

1. Launch iPhoto on your Mac. (it's free and comes with OS X, the software that runs your Mac.)
2. If you use iCloud and Photo Stream, wait for your photos to sync over. If you took a lot, it may take several minutes, even on a fast Wi-Fi connection.
3. If you don't use iCloud, or you want to go even faster, connect your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad to your Mac using your Lightning or 30-pin Dock connector and sync your Camera Roll to iPhoto over USB.
4. Select the photos you want to use in your book.
5. Click on the Share button at the bottom right.
6. Click on Book.
7. Choose the format (hardcover, wired, etc.), style (picture book, journal, etc.), size (L, XL, etc.), and color of the book project you want to start.
8. Click on Create.
9. Click on each page to edit the photos and text.
10. Click on Buy Book once you're done.

Making your journal into — your — journal

Apple offers a ton of options for your book. You can choose between hard cover and soft cover, and whether you want it wire bound or not. You can pick the theme by either using the drop down (handy if you already know which one you want), or the carousel to browse them all (handy if this is your first book).

You can choose the size at the bottom left, either large (L) or extra large (XL), and the paper color at the bottom right.

Once you've picked all that and created your new book project, you can still change your mind about the theme using the "change theme" button at the top right.

iPhoto will pre-populate your book with all the photos you chose. If you haven't chosen enough photos to fill the book, you'll need to choose more photos, change the page layout to show fewer photos per page, or even repeat a few of your favorites.

Click on a page to change the layout, photos, arrangement, options, or text. Click on a photo or text block to move or edit it, or click on Options to add things like borders or captions.

Once you're done and happy, click Buy Book and Apple will get the process started!

Bottom line

Digital is glorious. Digital is beautiful. But for some things, for some people, you just want a real book to hold in your hands, real pages to flip between your fingers, and real printing to splash beautiful photographic light across your eyes. From coffee table compendiums to National Geographic magazine, there's a long, proud history of nature books and journals and, thanks to Apple and iPhoto, anybody and everybody can make one of their very own.

If you visit a park or a mountain, a trail or chasm, your backyard or the beach, take photos with your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, and then make yourself a book with your memories, or make one as a gift for your friends or family. Either way, it'll be enjoyed!

Made any books using iPhoto? Making one now? Let me know what you made and how it turned out!

Last week Apple announced plans to nix both iPhoto and Aperture{.nofollow} in favor of a new application called Photos, which we saw briefly on stage at WWDC in June. That announcement has created a lot of uncertainty for Aperture users, who wonder what they should do about their digital photography workflow. Let's look at the options.

Option 1: Do nothing

The fact is that Aperture isn't going away — it's just not going to be developed any further. Apple is committed to keeping Aperture working through OS X Yosemite, which won't be out until this fall.

Apple committed to an annual upgrade cycle for OS X, so it won't be until late 2015 before you may need to jump ship to something else. Assuming you upgrade when OS X 10.11 is released, and assuming that 10.11 will break or deprecate technology that Aperture needs.

So if you're currently using Aperture, nothing's going to stop you from continuing to use Aperture for the time being. You're probably not going to want to upgrade to Yosemite right away anyway. Let other people fall on the early adoption sword and suffer the inevitable problems that happen when a new operating system is released.

Waiting has another practical benefit, too. Which brings me to my next point.

Option 2: Wait for Photos and see how it compares

The fact that Photos is being pitched as a replacement for both iPhoto and Aperture is cause for concern for pro photographers and serious hobbyists, because they doubt that a consumer-grade app will fit the bill for what they need to do.

No one I've spoken to thinks that Photos is going to be a direct replacement for Aperture, at least not for heavy-duty Aperture users. "Jack of all trades, master of none" is the expression that comes to mind, and any app that's being positioned as a replacement for both a consumer-grade app like iPhoto and a professional-grade app like Aperture is bound to lose something in the transition.

Having said that, Apple recently told Ars Technica that Photos will sport some of what makes Aperture really useful, including "image search, editing, effects, and most notably, third-party extensibility."

Although some Aperture users will be lost in the transition here, it's clear that Apple is positioning Photos to fill the needs of many photographers who currently use Aperture.

Photos isn't due out until early 2015. Once it's available we'll be able to take a look at it and judge whether it's truly an Aperture replacement or if it's just a gussied up iPhoto, which is what some of us fear.

Regardless, some of Aperture's users will be left wanting. And for them, there's little choice but to follow my next recommendation.

Option 3: Use something else

There are certainly other options besides Aperture, like Adobe's own Lightroom application. Lightroom offers advanced cataloging and non-destructive editing functions just like Aperture, and it's well-integrated with Photoshop, which is likely already part of your workflow.

You can certainly buy a copy of Lightroom 5 ($149 retail, less than that on Amazon) and get started on learning how to transition away from Aperture right now, but you don't have to fork out that kind of cash just to give it a try. Adobe offers a time-limited demo.

Lightroom 5 is part of Adobe's Creative Cloud subscription service, either as part of the entire Creative Cloud suite — priced at $49.99 per month — or as part of their $9.99 per month "Photography" collection, which includes Photoshop and Lightroom (both for desktop and mobile).

Lightroom certainly isn't the only option, either. ACDSee Pro 7 is another software tool that combines digital asset management and non-destructive editing. Corel's AfterShot Pro (originally Bibble) is another option. There's Phase One's Capture One Pro 7. There are more, too.

What do you plan to do?

I have no overwhelming desire to toss out Aperture simply because Apple's moving in a different direction. I've used it for years and it does what I need it to do quite nicely. I've dabbled with Lightroom and continue to use it, but Aperture remains my photo management and non-destructive editing tool of choice. I'm waiting to see how close Photos will fit the bill when it finally gets released before I decide my next step with any certainty.

How about you? Did Apple's recent announcement force your hand? Or are you taking a wait and see approach? Let me know in the comments.

During the WWDC 2014 keynote presentation Apple showed off a new app for OS X Yosemite currently in development called Photos. It won't be out until 2015, but it looks like it's going to replace both iPhoto and Aperture on the Mac. This promises to be a good thing for consumers, but where does this leave professional and prosumer photographers on the Mac?

On Friday Apple revealed to Jim Dalrymple at The Loop that Aperture, Apple's pro photo app, is being discontinued in favor of Photos. This is a blow to anyone who's depended on Aperture for its organizational abilities and its extensive non-destructive editing functions.

Apple's shown over and over again that it's willing to cause some short-term discomfort to users of existing products for long-term benefit. iMovie, Final Cut Pro, Pages, Keynote and Numbers — there are lots of examples where Apple has essentially scrapped the product and started over because a different path was chosen. And they're doing it again with Aperture and iPhoto.

iPhoto vs. Aperture

iPhoto comes with the Mac, and it provides a full array of photo editing, cataloging and sharing capabilities right out of the box. iPhotos is set up to offer you as much organization functionality as possible without your direct intervention. iPhoto organizes photos by event, for example. It incorporates facial recognition, so you can more easily find pictures of family and friends. And it reads GPS data (when embedded in your photos' metadata), so you can organize photos easily by location.

A variety of built-in editing tools help iPhoto make your images look better. You can crop images, straighten them, remove red-eye, perform one-click enhancements that make adjustments to lighting, color saturation and other attributes, apply effects, and get down into the nitty gritty by adjusting various aspects of the photo like exposure, contrast, saturation, color levels and more.

Aperture is to iPhoto what Logic is to GarageBand. Some of the same basic concepts, but greatly enhanced for the needs of professionals. Aperture emphasizes non-destructive photo editing that doesn't take up huge amounts of hard disk space, so you can undo what you've done or just subtract specific elements that you don't like (iPhoto has some non-destructive editing capabilities; Aperture has a lot more).

Aperture also emphasizes work with "raw" digital formats — the data that the camera actually recorded on its imaging chip, not compressed and changed with JPG. Raw images are supported on iPhoto, but Aperture's entire workflow is based on the assumption you're starting with raw files. Accordingly, Aperture has a more complete feature set of image adjustments and retouching abilities.

Another area Aperture really sets itself apart from iPhoto is in its vast organizational abilities. Pro photographers shoot a lot of images and need to make sense of what they've shot. Aperture helps them do that, and helps them make changes to the metadata associated with each picture to help photographers catalog faster too.

Unfortunately, both Aperture and iPhoto have been prone to a lot of problems over the years. Stability issues, database corruption problems, not to mention really atrocious performance problems have all be reported and complained about by frequent users.

Ultimately iPhoto and Aperture were both hot messes. They needed to be replaced. But will Photos be able to replace both of them?

Photos

Both iPhoto and Aperture will be replaced by Photos beginning in 2015. Photos for the Mac borrows its name and its icon from its iOS counterpart.

So far public information about Photos is pretty scant. Outside of a precious few minutes getting demoed by Apple senior vice president of Software Engineering Craig Federighi on the WWDC keynote stage, very little is known about the new Photos app on the Mac. What we do know is that it has an interface that looks thoroughly optimized for multi-touch gestures on a trackpad or Magic Mouse.

Federighi showed off some image retouching functionality in Photos and gave a brief demonstration of navigating within timelines to emphasize its "beautiful, buttery scrolling."

Federighi calls Photos "a new grounds-up photo solution for the Mac built with iCloud in mind." And Federighi also demonstrated some impressive retouching capabilities that promise to make it easier to make your photos look better.

Photos promises to be a better mainstream photo editing and cataloging tool for iPhoto, but Apple's set the bar low there. And as it exists now, Aperture and iPhoto's iCloud support seems more grafted on than truly integrated.

One way or the other, it'll take a lot more than what we saw to fill in the blanks to Aperture users' satisfaction.

The end of Aperture

In the interest of full disclosure, I have — or at least had — a horse in this race. At one time, shortly after Aperture first came out, I became an Apple-certified Aperture trainer. I really loved Aperture. I got to know the app pretty well and I was impressed with its flexibility, with Apple's focus on making it a great workflow tool for people who spent all day long taking and editing photos.

Over the years I heard a lot of complaints from photographers about Apple's development and improvement to Aperture compared to Adobe, with its rival Lightroom software. Adobe was more nimble, more responsive to photographers, quicker to make changes to Lightroom and advance new photography workflow concepts.

It had become clear years ago that despite early promises to pro photographers, Apple just wasn't that invested in keeping Aperture competitive.

So I started grinding my teeth when I read Apple's reassurance to Dalrymple that development on other pro apps like their video and audio editing tools continues unchanged. My first thought is that it's true for as long as it's expedient for Apple to do so. At one time Apple made similar promises to professional photographers.

I am thoroughly disappointed, but I can't say that I'm surprised. As I said, the writing has been on the wall for a while. Aperture has languished compared to other pro-level tools from Apple.

What's more, many professional photographers have more thoroughly incorporated Adobe Lightroom into their workflow, as they were already using Photoshop to improve and retouch images. Like many creative professionals, many photographers are more invested in Adobe's software ecosystem to begin with, so it was a simpler transition.

The bottom line

Both Aperture and iPhoto still work today and Apple has promised an Aperture compatibility update for OS X Yosemite when it ships this fall. What happens next year and the year after is a different story. But right now, most people using these tools can stay the course until Photos is out in the world.

Professional photographers who haven't already looked at Lightroom probably ought to at this point; Adobe offers a free trial version so you can get started.

Even assuming Photos can fit the Aperture bill, Apple has an uphill climb to regain the trust of professionals who invested in Aperture as the center of their digital photography workflow.

Do you do a lot of digital photography with your Mac? Do you use Aperture, Lightroom or something else to manage it? What do you think of Apple's decision? Sound off in the comments.

Escalation. Costner brings a knife, Connery brings a gun. Wayne dresses in a bat suit, a smiling psycho gets green hair and a purple suit. And I write an article about my iPad Home screen, so Peter goes and posts about his Mac dock. Well, two can play the escalation game. So, here's what's on my Retina MacBook Pro dock right now!

• Wallpaper: I'm Captain Default, live with it.
• Mac App Store: It's where I get and re-download most of my Mac apps.
• iTunes: I use iCloud for sync so the only reason I keep iTunes around — aside from the occasional DFU restore — is to convert our podcast files to MP3 and add metadata before I upload. There are other tools that can do both, but iTunes is easy.
• iBooks: I don't really read on my Mac but I like having all of Apple's stores all lumped together.
• Mail: I have both my personal iCloud and work Gmail going into Apple's default mail client. I like unified inboxes.
• Safari: I use Safari for 80% of my web browsing. I do keep Chrome installed for occasional Flash files and Google services, but I vastly prefer the look and experience of Safari, and the ties to iOS Safari as well.
• System Preferences: I could probably remove System Preferences from my Dock but I sort of like the comfort of it being there, omnipresent.
• iPhoto: Thanks to Photo Stream all the screenshots and photos I take from my iPhone and iPad show up in iPhoto for easy dragging to Photoshop, almost instantaneously. - Free with new Macs - Download now
• Aperture: I mostly use Aperture to do a few quick adjustments before right-clicking and "editing in Photoshop". That's why I use it over Lightroom. The lack of updates and features have minimal impact and I don't need the workflow Lightroom provides. - $79,99 - Download now
• Photoshop: I've been using it for decades. It's muscle memory at this point. Almost all imaging I do is done in Photoshop. (And I kinda like the new Creative Cloud subscription model...) - $(variable) - Download now
• Napkin: How we do all the how-to diagrams we do on iMore. There's nothing faster or easier. Most of the staff here use it now. - $39.99 - Download now
• Tweetbot: There are several great Twitter apps for Mac but Tweetbot fits the way my brain works. - $19.99 - Download now
• iMessage: Most of my friends and family have Macs and use iPhones and iPads so we all stay connected via iMessage. Yeah, there are rare glitches, but 95% of the time it works fast and flawlessly, and it has apps on mobile and desktop.
• Skype: The Mobile Nations office phone. When I'm working, I'm on Skype. And angry about it!. - Free - Download now
• TextExpander: Most of what I write online is in Markdown and TextExpander makes entering frequent passages, links, data, and boiler plate so fast, so easy, that I don't know how anyone can work without it. - $34.95 - Download now
• Feeder: I produce 5 or so podcasts a week here at iMore and every one of their RSS feeds is burned using Feeder. - $39.99 - Download now
• BBEdit: If it's plain text, chances are I wrote it in BBEdit. For what I do, it's like bringing a nuke to a fist fight, but I like the idea that I'll likely never out grow what I'm typing it. - $49.99 - Download now
• Coda 2: I don't manually edit web sites as often as I used to — we have far smarter people for that on our tech team! — but whenever I have to tweak a header or CSS file or do anything else on any server, I do it with Panic's Coda 2. - $74.99 - Download now

There are a couple other apps I use all the time but aren't in my menu bar, like Final Cut Pro and Garage Band, because I'd forget to quit them when I was done if I got overly used to seeing them there, and they hit the resources hard enough I don't want to forget to quit them. There's also a bunch of stuff, Like Dropbox, 1Password, and Fantastical, that I use all the time but that sit in the menu bar rather than the Dock. Let me know if you're curious about them and I'll do a follow up about what's in my menu bar. Also, fair's fair — now that I've shown you mine, tell me yours! What's in your Mac Dock right now?

If you picked up a shiny new iPad Air today, be sure to drop by the App Store and download the free iLife and iWork applications from Apple! Recently made free with the purchase of a new iOS device, the collection of Apple applications is a great way to add productivity and creativity to your new iPad. And of course, with iCloud integration you get to share your content with respective applications on your Mac and iPhone.

So, grab them for yourselves using the handy links below, and if you're a first time downloader of any of them, let me know what you think!

• Free - Download Now - Pages for iPad
• Free - Download Now - Numbers for iPad
• Free - Download Now - Keynote for iPad
• Free - Download Now - iMovie for iPad
• Free - Download Now - iPhoto for iPad
• Free - Download Now - Garageband for iPad

As shown at the Apple Event earlier in the day, Apple late on Tuesday released updated iWorks and iLife apps for iOS. Those include Pages, Numbers, Keynote, iPhoto, iMovie and GarageBand - all updated to version 2.0.

The new apps have been reworked to support the user interface changes in iOS 7 and a new unified file format that works across Mac, iOS and the web. All are free updates for existing users, and free with the purchase of a new iOS device.

Pages gets more than 60 Apple-designed templates; keyboard support for text formatting options, the ability to share documents through iCloud, AirDrop, ePub export, improved non-Roman foreign language support and much more.

• $9.99 - Download now

Numbers sports new interactive charts, faster calculation, export to CSV, file sharing with Mail, Messages, Twitter and Facebook, and more.

• $9.99 - Download now

Keynote gains new themes, new animation and effects, interactive charts and more.

• $9.99 - Download now

iPhoto gets redesigned, and supports the ability to order professionally printed hardbound books. You can create custom slideshows that can be controlled using gestures, new photo effects have been added, new widgets support national flags and currency, white balance will compensate for underwater shots, and more.

• $4.99 - Download now

iMovie sports a new iMovie Theater feature that makes it easier to watch your movies anywhere. Full-screen video browsing is new, along with an adjustments bar to make audio and video adjustments easier. Sixteen new title styles have been added, along iwth three new transitions, new trailers, slow motion support, new imaging effects and much more.

• $4.99 - Download now

GarageBand has gone free, but to use the full array of instruments and sounds, you'll need to unlock a $4.99 In-App Purchase. You can create songs with up to 32 tracks (on 64-bit equipped systems like the iPhone 5s, the new iPad Air and the new iPad mini with Retina Display). Inter-App Audio lets you record compatible third-party music apps, and you can drag and drop audio recordings to create your own custom Sampler Instruments.

• Free - Download now