Get to Know Photos

Once you’ve taken a photo or video with the Camera app, or saved an image from another app, you can find it in the Photos app. Images from shared albums and iCloud Photo Library also appear in Photos (see An Introduction to iCloud). This chapter will get you started with Photos and tell you about its new features, but for full coverage, see Jason Snell’s Photos: A Take Control Crash Course.

View Your Photos

There are four views in Photos: Photos, Memories, Shared, and Albums, accessed by tapping icons at the bottom of the screen.

The Photos view has three levels. The broadest level, Years, groups photos by, well, years. Tap a group of photos in any year, and you see Collections, which include photos from smaller date ranges, as well by geographic regions. Tap any Collection, and you see Moments, which group photos by small units of time and location.

At any level, tap a photo to drill down; in Moments, tapping a photo opens it full screen. To move back up a level, tap the arrow at the upper-left corner.

There’s a useful shortcut for browsing your photos: the scrubber. When you’re viewing a photo, the scrubber shows tiny previews of other photos taken around that time at the bottom of the screen. Drag the scrubber to scan through them quickly.

Swipe up on a photo to see additional details, such as who’s in the photo, where the photo was taken, and associated Memories (see Walk Down Memory Lane). On supported devices, this view also shows Live Photo effects.

Work with Live Photos

When you expose photo details, if you’re viewing a Live Photo and your device supports Live Photos, you will see different effects you can apply to a Live Photo:

• Live: This is the default effect. It merely plays the mini-video and stops.
• Loop: The Loop effect plays the mini-video on a repeating loop.
• Bounce: This effect is like a backwards loop. When the mini-video reaches its conclusion, it plays back in reverse.
• Long Exposure: This blends the frames of the mini-video to simulate a long exposure photo.

You can also choose a new key photo for a Live Photo in iOS 11. In other words, if you took a photo, but prefer one of the frames of the Live Photo video, you can choose that frame as the still picture instead! Here’s how:

1. While viewing a single photo, tap Edit in the upper-right corner.
2. Look for the series of images at the bottom of the screen and drag the white box left or right to scrub through them (Figure 57).
3. Tap Make Key Photo to change the key photo. To maintain the same key photo, drag the white box to under the white dot. It should “click” into place.

Select Photos

Before you can perform operations on photos (like moving or sharing them), you must first select them with one of the follow methods:

• Select a single photo: Tap the photo you wish to work with, or if another photo is already selected, pick the desired photo from the scrubber.
• Select multiple photos in an album or Moments view: Tap Select in the upper-right corner, and then tap each photo you wish to work with. A checkmark appears on selected photos. Alternatively, you can tap Select All after tapping Select to choose all photos in that view.
• Drag to select multiple photos in an album or Moments view: After tapping Select in the upper-right corner, touch the first photo you want, and then drag to keep selecting photos.

  You can lift your finger and repeat this process until you’ve selected all the photos you want.

Organize with Albums

Tap Albums at the bottom of the Photos screen to see the default albums plus any you’ve created on the device or synced through iTunes.

Default albums that you may see include Camera Roll (or All Photos), Favorite Memories, Favorites, People, Places, Videos, Selfies, Live Photos, Panoramas, Time-lapse, Slo-mo, Depth Effect, Bursts, Screenshots, Animated, Hidden, and Recently Deleted.

Create an Album

Albums let you group pictures together. There are many automatic albums, but you can create your own by hand:

1. In Albums view, tap the plus button in the upper-left corner.
2. Enter a name and tap Save.
3. Add items to your album. You can add from moments, collections, and years, as well as from other albums.
4. When you’ve selected the photos you want to include, tap Done.

Add Photos to an Album

Adding additional photos to an album is easy:

1. Select some photos you wish to add to an album.
2. Tap Add To.
3. Select the album you want (default albums that are populated automatically are dimmed) or tap New Album, enter an album name, and tap Save.

Organize Photos by People

The People album uses facial recognition to organize photos by recognized faces:

• Favoriting faces: Tap the heart icon on a face. You’ll be prompted to name the face if you haven’t already. As you type a name, Photos will suggest names from your Contacts. Finally, you’ll be asked whether other pictures have that person—check or uncheck them as appropriate and tap Done when finished. After you’ve added one or more favorites, you can hide all other faces.
• Naming faces: Tap a face to view its associated photos. At the top of the screen, tap Add Name and enter the name. As you type, suggested contacts appear. Tap one to associate the contact to that face.
• Adding faces: Tap the face, scroll down, and tap Confirm Additional Photos. You will be shown several photos, one a time, and be asked to verify if the selected person is correct.
• Hide faces: Tap the face, scroll down, and tap Remove From People Album.

Organize Photos by Places

Photos now features a special album that displays your photos by location. The Places album displays photos either on a map, or in a grid divided by location.

In the map view, photos first appear tightly grouped together, but spread out further as you zoom in (Figure 58).

Delete Photos and Videos

We live in an age where it’s almost too easy to take a photo! Here’s how to delete them to get rid of bad ones and free up space:

1. Select the item(s) that you wish to delete.
2. Tap the Trash icon.
3. Tap the Delete button.

Walk Down Memory Lane

Memories use artificial intelligence to automatically gather photos and videos by date, location, people, and objects into collections with names like On This Day, Christmas Day 2016, and San Francisco.

Here’s how to work with Memories:

• Create Memories: Photos generates Memories automatically. However, you can generate Memories from related photos. Open a photo, swipe up on it to see details, scroll down to Related, and tap one of the related photo collections there. Scroll down and tap Add to Memories to make a memory from those related photos.
• Favorite Memories: If you love a particular memory, view it, scroll down, and tap Add to Favorite Memories. You can find Favorite Memories with the rest of your albums.
• Delete Memories: Memories are computer-generated and therefore can sometimes be stupid or insensitive in the photos they bring together. To remove a rogue memory, view it, scroll down, and tap Delete Memory.
• Block Memories: There’s a new option in iOS 11 to deal with offensive Memories. Under Delete Memory is a Block Memory option. Tap that to see options to block Memories of that day or that place.

Viewing Memory Slideshows

At the top of each memory is a video slideshow; tap it to play, though you’ll likely have to wait a minute for it to begin. Tap the screen while it plays to see more controls:

• Themes: Apple provides ten text and music themes to choose from, such as Gentle, Chill, and Epic.
• Transition Length: Choose Short or Medium, to adjust how long the slideshow lingers on an image.
• Share: Tap the Share icon to export your slideshow as a movie and send it to others. You can also save a movie of the slideshow like any other video.
• Pause/Play: Tap Pause or Play to stop or play the slideshow.
• Edit: Tap Edit to adjust slideshow settings: title, music (either from Apple’s included tracks or your library), duration, and which photos and videos are included.

iCloud Photo Sharing

iCloud Photo Sharing lets you share an entire album of photos and videos. Friends and family can view the album in the Photos app or on the web.

To share selected photos or videos:

1. Tap the Share icon.
2. Tap iCloud Photo Sharing in the Share sheet.
3. Tap Shared Album to pick any album or make a new one. If you choose to make a new album, you’ll be prompted to name it and enter email addresses of people with whom you want to share.
4. Optionally, enter a comment.
5. Tap Post.

To see the shared album, switch to the Shared view and tap the album’s icon.

To manage a shared album, open it and tap People. From here, you can invite or uninvite subscribers, put the album on the web and get a URL to it, allow others to post pictures, and more.

In the Shared view, you can also see albums that others have shared with you. While viewing a shared album, you can “like” photos and videos, add comments, possibly upload your own photos, and more.