Perhaps you are the most amazing fan of the Mac Photos App, or perhaps, you hate it with a burning passion. Whichever the case, the thing is that the app is quite able, believe it or not. And so, it is not going to go away anytime soon.
The app offers a great number of different features to please almost any photo enthusiast. That is, of course, as long as one does not like to hate it just for the sake of hating it.
The Photos App, actually, has a number of features which can make your digital life super easy. And that is exactly the focus of this article.
How can it do that? Let’s stop wasting time and get to the point straight.
It can make your life easy when it comes to:
1. Editing your snaps
If you are like most people, then being able to edit your photos to your liking is important to you; regardless of how unproductive the task may really be.
Good news is, if you know what you are doing, you can edit your photo within seconds with the help of the Photos app. You can easily enter the edit mode by pressing the ‘Edit’ button located near the corner in the top right portion of your screen. Or, you can simply use your keyboard’s ‘Return’ key for the purpose.
Editing your favourite snaps with the help of the app is quite fun, actually. As soon as you enter the mode, the background becomes black and seven different buttons emerge toward the right side of the screen. The whole thing looks visually appealing.
The first button is named ‘Enhance’, which has the job of enhancing the appearance of your photo. Clicking the button elevates your image automatically, by either adjusting saturation a bit, or making changes to brightness, or doing something else.
The second button is called ‘Rotate’. When you click the button, your image gets rotated counterclockwise by 90 degrees at once. The button is helpful to deal with images which seem somewhat skewed.
The ‘Crop’ option, which is the third button, allows you to get rid of any unwanted side space of your photo. While it does a great job of bringing attention to the main subject by eliminating distraction, it also proves to be useful for straightening your photo. That is because you can use the manual crop feature to drag the different image corners. The button also gives you the ability to crop your image with the help of aspect ratios, for example 4:3 or 16:9.
The next or fourth option, ‘Filters’, presents you with 9 different instant filters which possess the power to alter the saturation and colour of the image you are dealing with. The button makes changing colours really easy. For instance, you can make your photo monochrome from colour using just one click!
As far as the ‘Adjust’ button is concerned, it can be regarded as something that puts you in the driver’s seat when it comes to getting rid of exposure, shadows, highlights, contrast, brightness, and black portions.
The sixth button is known as ‘Retouch’. True to its name, it enables you to get rid of any unwanted scratches or spots that your photo may have.
And finally, the last option called ‘Red-Eye’ does exactly what you think it does. That is, it removes any ghostly red-eye colour that may be making your photo a bit ugly.
The best part about editing a photo with the help of the Photos app is that you can easily get your original version back after editing your photo. Even if you save your photo with the help of the yellowish ‘Done’ button, you can still find your original.
2. Sharing special moments
Photo sharing is one of those things that we just do nowadays. We do not even think about it anymore consciously. It has become a part of our day to day lives, like a habit almost. Still, many apps in the market can make the job quite dreadful.
When you are dealing with the Photos app, sharing your photos no longer seems like a dreaded task. Instead, it seems like fun.
You can choose from two different sharing modes. The first mode is Standard. The second option is through iCloud. With the help of the latter, you can share your photos using Facebook, Flickr, Mail, AirDrop or Messages. Doing the same is really easy. All you have to do is pick your favourite images followed by clicking on the ‘Share’ option.
Although the Standard share option has its pros, iCloud seems to fare far better. That is because it is the option that gives you the ability to share your holiday photos with a select few friends or relatives. You can choose who can see your photos by inviting people manually. The images you share can be found in a scrolling wall of photos, and even your friends and relatives can add their shares to it. In the wall, you can see photos individually, or with the help of a slideshow.
3. Getting to the nitty-gritty
Sometimes, finding out the small things about a photo becomes important. Keeping that in mind, the app makes finding out what a particular photo is all about really straightforward. By clicking on the round ‘i’ button, you can view all the details associated with a photo. You can become aware of the camera model, and you can see the correct resolution. You can even come to know its location in case GPS integration was used at the time of capturing it. Not just that, if you wish you can expand the information present by adding title, keywords, description and other data, meant to make search easy. Note that the information page can be located by pressing ‘Command’ + ‘i’ on your computer’s keyboard, as well.
4. Creating mesmerising projects
During those times when you want to print your photos, or prepare cards with them, or craft a beautiful calendar with their help, the app can come to your rescue. With its ‘Projects’ option, you can create a new project and design it to your heart’s desire. You can even create beautiful slideshows and books with the help of the same.
In order to order print of your photos, or start a project, or form a slideshow, you need to choose the photos you want to incorporate from your Albums or Photos, and then pick the kind of project you want o start from the various menu options. Even though all of the menu options are nice and exciting, the ‘Cards’ option especially impresses as it has the ability to create truly eye-catching greeting cards. You can even get embossed letterpress type of cards formed with the help of the app. As far as books go, you can get hardcover edition, or soft edition. The interesting thing is that you can even pick a book shape: rectangular or square. Another thrilling aspect is that the learning curves associated with completing the different projects are quite short and easy.
5. Savouring photo albums
Not many photo applications give you the convenience of storing your photos in different albums. Mac Photos app does, however.
The Album feature comes handy when you have thousands of vacation photos and not all of them are great, which is the typical case with holidays. With the help of the feature, you can differentiate between the ones you love the most and the ones that you do not love all that much.
In order to create an Album of photos, you have to pick the desired photos from your photo library. The relieving part is, even if you delete one photo from your album, it remains in your library. So, you can just go ahead and do whatever you like with your album photos without fearing any loss of data.
Creating an Album is a good idea to categorise photos. For example, if you click a few hundred wedding photos, you can categorise them into different categories, such as reception, wedding and the likes.
What is intriguing about the app, however, is that the app is able to categorise photos to different albums simply by following an advanced process. It categorises photos according to last date, face, time lapse, and many other criteria. The app even has the ability to categorize photos according to the iOS app using which it was taken. For instance, if certain photos are associated with Instagram, and others are with FX Photo Studio, the app differentiates between those by creating two distinct folders.
The feature of smart album is one of the most precious features the app offers without a doubt. In order to create a new one, you just need to click on "File" menu then go to ‘New Smart Album’, and then provide a description of what you want it to be about. The reason smart albums are regarded that way is because they empower you to categorise photos using criteria like a specific face, before a certain date, and many other complex things.
The point is this: in case you have not tried it out yet, go ahead and give it a shot. We believe it will not disappoint you.