Jan 23, 2019 To see how many photos and videos are in your library, select Photos, click Moments, then scroll to the bottom. If you have iCloud Photos turned on, the status bar also shows how the photo library on your Mac compares to what's in iCloud Photos. If you're uploading photos to iCloud Photos, you can click Pause or Resume here. How to Locate Your Missing Original iPhoto Library File On Your Computer. By Curtis Bisel 112 comments. When photos go missing from your iPhoto collection, it usually falls under two specific situations. You will need to work your way through both and figure out which one you are dealing with. Just large file sized photo library files. Mar 26, 2020 PowerPhotos allows you to break up your Photos.app images among multiple Photos libraries, rather than having to store all of them in one giant library. You can easily switch between libraries, or just browse the photos in your libraries directly from PowerPhotos, without having to open each library in Photos.
2) Download and install Photos Duplicate Cleaner from the Mac App Store if you haven’t already, and then launch the app via your Applications folder, or by searching for it using Spotlight. 3) From the app’s interface, click on the “Add Photos Library” button.
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
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.
Launch Photos on your Mac.
- Click on Photos in the sidebar, under the Library section.
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.
- Right-click on your chosen photos and videos.
- Move the cursor to Add to.
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.
- Launch Photos on your Mac.
Either right-click on My Albums in the sidebar, or hover above and then click on the + button that appears next to My Albums.
- Click New Folder.
Give your folder a name.
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.
- Launch Photos on your Mac.
Right-click on My Albums or click the + button that appears next to My Albums.
- Select New Smart Album.
- Give your Smart Album a name.
Choose the parameters for your Smart Album.
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.
- Launch Photos on your Mac.
- Click on View in the menu bar.
- Select Show Sidebar in the menu.
- The sidebar will appear on the left side of the screen.
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.
- Launch Photos on your Mac.
- Make sure that you're in the Photos view from the sidebar.
Click on Photos, Moments, Collections, or Years buttons at the top of the window.
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.
- You can also use your keyboard's arrow keys to move between photos and videos in a Moment.
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.
- Launch Photos on your Mac.
Make sure you're in the Photos section in the sidebar.
Source: iMore
Click the Years, Months, or Days buttons at the top of the window. The default view is All Photos.
Clicking on Years lets you see each year as a block. Double-clicking the year takes you into Months.
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.
- Hold down the Option key on your keyboard.
- Double-click on Photos on your Mac.
- Click on the Create New button in the Choose Library window.
- Name your Library.
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 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.
- Make sure that Photos is not open (quit if it is).
- Hold down the Option key on your keyboard.
- Double-click on Photos.
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.
- Launch a Finder window on your Mac.
- Click on the Mac hard drive (Macintosh HD) in the sidebar.
- Double-click on the Users folder.
- Double-click on your username.
- Double-click on your Pictures folder.
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.
Photos for Mac
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For all your USB-C needsThe HybridDrive is a USB-C dock with an SSD built in
You need more ports, right? And you probably need more storage, right? What you really need is the HybridDrive.
Key Difference – iPhoto vs Photos
Photo editing, sorting photos, and saving photos have become very common in today world as the amount of photos taken have increased compared to the past years. iPhoto was a great app that had all the features needed to solve the above problems. But now, Photos app has come as a replacement of iPhotos. Photos is a new app with almost all the features that iPhotos has and much more. The key differences between iPhoto and Photos app exist in the sorting and editing features. Let us take a closer look and find out more differences between the two apps, iPhoto and Photos.
iPhoto App Review
iPhoto was designed to support the Mac and iOS as the premier photo editing tool and photo management software when it was released with OS X 10.9 Mavericks. The desktop version had differences when compared with the mobile app which supported iPhone and iPad. The interface of the mobile app was more modern and elegant compared to the desktop version of the same app.
When taking a photo with a camera, the photo will need some kind of editing to enhance it. There are high-end tools like Photoshop that provide a lot of editing features which might be too much for many who do not have prior experience and expertise with the tools that it contains. This is where apps like iPhoto have an advantage. The interface is simple and using and getting familiar with the editing tools it contains are easy as well. With just a click, the photos can be improved automatically by changing photo related parameters and features. Photos can also be converted to black and white, vignette, etc.
After the photos have been imported into the library, photos can be pinned onto maps, used for creating albums, and create groups of particular people in photos, which is useful for family photos. The photos can be grouped according to events as well. These photos can also be used to make slide shows and can be shared via Facebook or Twitter. Also, basic editing is supported by this app. The basic editing features provided by iPhoto include cropping, rotate, straighten, red eye, enhance, and retouch. There are further panels like effects and adjust for further enhancing the image. After editing, the photos can be published to make photo books, cards, prints, and calendars.
The iCloud photo sharing makes it possible to share photos and videos clips. This can be setup so that family and friends can share their photos and videos and view each other’s photo at the same time. With the use of the iCloud library the photos that are uploaded to iCloud.com can be viewed on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
Photos App Review
The Photos app was released by the Apple to replace Aperture and iPhotos as a single app in June 2014. The Aperture and iPhotos were Apple’s two photo editing applications prior to the launch of the Photos app. The Photos app is able to integrate well with Photos iOS and iCloud photos web. This can be done by logging onto your iCloud account and clicking on the Photos button. With the Mac OS X 10.10.3 update, all the Photos have been integrated across the Mac, iOS device, and the iCloud. The photos can be viewed in the same way across all three platforms. If a photo is added to any one of the above devices, it will be updated across all the devices, which is a cool feature. However, the photo update could be slow due to the connection speed, but if the photos were shot using an iPhone or iPad, we could expect the update to be faster with JPEG. The other factor for the slower update could be the RAW format, which consumes a lot of space.
There is another problem with the storage capacity of iCloud; it is limited to 5GB free of charge space. Anything more than that would cost a monthly subscription. And if you are looking for a high-end photo library using iCloud, The capacity provided for free will not be sufficient, and we would need to move on to other storage providers for a cheaper rate.
The Photos app organizes photos using information like time, date, and location which comes with the image with Apple devices. If the photos were taken using a camera, it may lack the location unless built-in GPS features are present with the camera. This could become a problem when organizing photos using the Photos app and sorting the photos.
The Photos app groups the photos according to Years (uses the date on photos), Collections (uses the date range and location), or Moments (uses the date, location if available). These photos can be edited easily by pressing the enter key, or double clicking will lead you to a full-screen preview. In the event, if the images were shot using a regular camera, there is a feature called Albums where the photos can be saved manually using preferred criteria like file name or location. Using the Albums is more structured when comparing with the grouping method provided by Photos. Album also provides features to make slideshows, cards, calendars, and books with the use of the project tab.
The editing feature that comes with the Photos app is much better compared with the iPhoto app. On the right-hand side of the window comes many editing options which sound simple but have depth. Enhance option adjusts the properties of the photo, like color and brightness, automatically whereas the rotate option rotates the photo 90 degrees. There is also a crop tool to crop away parts of the photo that are not needed.
The Photo app also has a tool to straighten the photos that were taken at a slant using the calibrated degrees feature. The aspect ratio can also be set inside the editing area for printing and screen viewing on the monitor. Effects is also another feature that enhances the image with just one click.
The adjustments come with a range of editing tools that empower the user to separate them as basic, details, and advance under the add menu. There is also an auto button which edits the photo with the above options automatically. The retouch feature in the app is used to heal image areas or clone areas of the image to cover up imperfections.
What is the difference between iPhoto and Photos?
Most of what iPhoto had as its feature came with Photos as well. However, there are some features that were enhanced while some other features were removed. Let us take a look at them in detail.
Enhanced Features
Sorting Special photos and videos
Open Library Photos Mac 10.13.4
Photos: Panorama photos, bursts photos, slow motion videos, and time-lapse videos can be sorted using apple’s Photos
iPhotos: Only capable of doing standard sorting.
Editing Features
Photos: Photo can be straightened and supports aspect ratio
iPhotos: Only standard features are applicable.
Shared Activity View
Photos: Photo are represented as a running log.
iPhotos: Photos can be viewed as an album.
Auto Crop Tool
Photos: Automatically detects the horizon and adjusts the crop setting.
iPhotos: Only standard cropping can be done with iPhotos.
Performance
Photos: Photos operates faster and capable of handling large image libraries.
iPhotos: iPhotos operates slower, comparatively.
Zoom View
How To Update My Mac To 10.13
Photos: Collection and years can be viewed as small thumbnails. Photos can be viewed by clicking on them or previewed by hovering over them with the pointer.
iPhotos: Photos can be viewed in the standard method.
Square Book
Photos: Printing photos can be done in square book format
iPhotos: The above feature is not supported by iPhotos.
Removed Features
Star Rating
Photos: Photo are rated as favorite using hearts. The star rating is preserved inside the photo when migrating from iPhotos to Photos.
iPhotos: Star rating is used to rate of photos.
Built-in Mail Tool
Photos: Built-in mail tool has been replaced with Yosemite’s Mail app. Message will be sent to the sent folder
iPhotos: Accommodated by a built-in mail tool.
Sharing on Flickr, Facebook
Photos: The direct sharing feature on Flickr and Facebook has been replaced by a system wide sharing tools.
iPhotos: Photos can be posted directly to Facebook or Flickr.
Geo-tagging
Photos: Not available with Photos
iPhotos: Geo-tagging is available.
Summary
iPhotos vs Photos Pros and Cons
From the above comparison, we are able to see that both apps have almost the same features but Photos has been further enhanced with more features. Performance of the app has also been improved. Due to the enhancements, many have migrated to Photos from iPhotos, but it is noteworthy that some features have been removed, and which may cause some users to opt to stay with iPhotos.