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!
Change Photos Library Location Mac
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.
If you want to migrate the assets synced to your iCloud Library, click the iCloud tab and select iCloud Photo Library. Ensure that Download Originals to this Mac is selected, as the Photos migrator can only migrate photos for which originals are stored locally. Wait for all your originals to be downloaded before you begin migration.
Here's your ultimate guide to setting up and using it!
How to get started with Photos for Mac
If you are looking for specific photos, navigate to the Originals folder. Photos are organized by date. If you have the newer version of iPhoto called Photos launched in 2015, you can find the photos using a similar method except instead of looking for iPhoto Library it's named Photo Library. Where to Keep Your Photos Library. Photos likes to keep your image library on the same drive as your startup disk. But, that’s just the default. You can store your image library wherever you wish: on the startup drive, on a separate partition, or on an external drive. Manually copy your library to an external storage device: Drag the Photos library (by default in the Pictures folder on your Mac) to your storage device to create a copy. If you have more than one photo library, be sure to back them all up. Aug 30, 2011 Where iPhoto Pictures Are Stored. IPhoto pictures are stored within the home /Pictures/ directory, in a file called iPhoto Library. But with newer versions of iPhoto, iPhoto Library became a package file rather than a folder, so in order to access the original picture files you have to go one step further in one of two locations. Mar 18, 2020 Your Photos library holds all your photos, albums, slideshows, and print projects. If your library is large, and you want to free up storage space on your Mac, turn on iCloud Photo Library and use Optimize Mac Storage, or move your library to an external drive. Where are the photos I imported into Photos on my Mac? By default, the photos and videos you import into Photos are stored in the Photos library in the Pictures folder on your Mac. When you first use Photos, you create a new library or select the library that you want to use. This library automatically becomes your System Photo Library.
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!
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.
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 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 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.
Questions?
Do you have a question about Photos for Mac? Let us know in the comments below!
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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 it up on your Mac and get everything configured to your liking!
How to set up iCloud Photo Library on your Mac
- Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
- Select the Photos menu in the upper left corner of your screen.
- Go to Preferences.
Click on the iCloud tab.
Source: iMore
Check 'iCloud Photos.' This will begin uploading any and all images you have stored in the Photos app to iCloud.
Source: iMore
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.
- Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
- Click Photos in the App menu in the upper left corner of your screen.
Select Preferences from the drop-down menu.
Source: iMore
- Click the iCloud tab.
Click Optimize Mac Storage.
Source: iMore
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.
Questions?
Let us know in the comments below.
Switch Photo Library On Mac
Updated January 2020: Updated for macOS Catalina. Serenity Caldwell worked on a previous version of this post
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