10 Simple Ways To Improve a Photo in the Mac Photos App

[@pedroarruda7878]

You deserve to be nominated for a 'MOscar'! Thank you for the excellent Turorials, I try not to miss any. Well done.

[@stephenbridges2791]

I used Aperture for years. I didn't really like the former version of Photos. But, the current version gives you the majority of the things that were available in Aperture. Or, for me at least; all the ones that were pertinent to what I do. I'm not a professional by any means, but; I do like nice pictures. Nice points in your video.

[@georgedavis-stewart4225]

I'm no expert, but I have been using this software for several years, on all sort of subjects and locations, for many purposes - and still you have something new to teach me. Many thanks.

[@gregs.8229]

Excellent introductory presentation of an important and useful Apple application

[@rogue_carlisle6167]

nice, I never really used photos in Mac. good to see someone showing the features after exploring the app.

[@chiparooo]

Great tips Gary! Just getting started trying to improve my photos. Thanks for sharing!

[@macforme]

I haven't used Photos since I moved to Sonoma ( directly from Safari !!) ( talk about a learning curve 🙄) but I will definitely try it now... Thank you, Gary! 👍

[@TheBoko7]

I had no idea that the retouch function was in the photo app. Thanks, Gary.

[@stratman103]

Another excellent tutorial, Gary! Thanks!

[@Roberto-REME]

Outstanding video. Informative, well explained and I appreciate the time you took to focus on details. Well done!

[@carolinebarlow4795]

Thanks very much, Gary, for this informative video! Really helpful rundown of the editing features in Photos.

[@phileagle8432]

Wow this looks great! I’ve always been put off editing due tie the complexity and all the options - I didnt realise the Photos app had such a great set of editing tools. Thx so much for explaining these so well and for giving some real world ways to use them!

[@ChinhNguyen-yb3cp]

Thank you! I always enjoy watching your video ❤

[@anilkumar1971]

Awesome video, as always!!

[@kevinleighuk]

I recently discovered the vignette tool. It's handy for adding a frame to a photo (in white or black), enabling the viewer to focus on the centre, which is ideal when you have a photograph of a person or people or animal and the surroundings are not essential or provide only backdrop without their detail needing to be seen. The vignette naturally leads the eye to the centre or away from the corners. This is also useful when you have nice photo but there is clutter around the edges and you do want to crop it, especially if it is just the corner areas that are cluttered. It is surprising how often just softly masking the corners with a vignette makes a photo "pop". It can work especially well if you convert an image to black and white.

[@timothyvanpelt_cyclist]

Great tutorial, learned new things and will make more use of the photos editing capabilities - seems to be just right for an interested amateur photographer like me.

[@loisskiathitis8926]

A very useful and informative video tutorial today! Your pictures are lovely! Thank you, Gary! 👏❤️

[@garynagle3093]

Very informative. Thank you

[@garudasomanna]

Thanks for these tips Gary. Is there any simple [free] way to improve the quality [pixels] of any photo that is of poor or low resolution?

[@johnvender]

Something I found that often does a good job of increasing resolution and making other improvements and is free is Upscayl. It works great on many images but the AI in it gets a bit confused on some.

[@macmost]

Technically, none at all. You can get more resolution from less. But some apps use AI to try to interpolate things. Upscaling it is called. Pixelmator for instance. But it is only useful in some cases and up to a point. Some people would say it isn't ever useful.

[@garudasomanna]

@@macmost Thanks for your reply Gary. I have a great respect and regard for your learning that is so deep in these matters. After watching this tutorial of yours, I imported a low quality jpg photo into Photos app, applied effects, and, while exporting the image as png, I selected the width randomly to 4000 [?pixels]. The imported image was of 73 KB whereas the exported one is at 375 KB; The imported image has dimensions of 640x426; whereas the exported is 592x394 the resolution of the imported file is not stated, but that of the exported file is 72x72. The exported file however looks better than the original of course but I don't know what to make of these changes in the data between the two. I shall try out pixelmator. Thanks again.

[@peterc2248]

Hi gary, is it possible to maintain two Photos libraries, one on iCloud that gets synced with my phone and iPad etc, and one where the photo's are just stored on my iMac?

[@mycreativedesignsspace6739]

It is not possible

[@macmost]

What is your goal here? What are you trying to accomplish by doing that? The answer depends on the WHY.

[@thebensisko]

Actually it IS completely possible. You can create a new library, and migrate whatever photos you want to leave outside iCloud into the new one. Since only one library (the system library) can sync to iCloud, any others you create will only have the photos stored locally on your Mac. But I think Gary’s question is pertinent: why do you want to do this? It could potentially complicate things that may not need to be.

[@macmost]

@@thebensisko Yes, my thoughts exactly. For instance searching for photos from that point on would require switching between libraries often. Moving a photo from one library to another isn't easy either. I can greatly complicate things. But if the local-only library represents something completely different (like a wedding photographer taking pictures for a job) then it could make sense.

[@AlannaBirmingham]

Excellent information! Thank you! Is there a way to add/remove a person in the background of a picture or is that a Photoshop function?

[@macmost]

That will require an app like Photoshop (or Pixelmator or Affinity, etc) and some skills too. Taking someone out is easy, but you have to replace the empty space with something.

[@AlannaBirmingham]

@@macmost thanks for that! 😃

[@karenclarke5684]

Is there a way on photos app that I can change the background colour of a photo to white. At present there is a subject (person) and a dull green wall with shadows. Thank you for all your videos, would have been lost without them!

[@macmost]

If you just want the person (subject) then Control+click and copy the subject and then paste where you want to use it. But if you want to create a new image, you'd first need the background in an app like Preview (or any image editing app) and then copy the subject from the photo and paste into that image.

[@Baluchishair]

How can i speed up the backspace and delete button speed in iMac. It's slow like a 1999 windows machine. Only cursor speed is slow otherwise machine is good. And I hope you know the defference between cursor and pointer.

[@macmost]

If you often find you want to delete a lot of text you wrote, use Option+Delete to delete whole words or Command+Delete to delete lines. But also in System Settings, Keyboard there is a repeat rate setting.

[@davidis7]

Hi Gary- Great Video! One (stupid question);the retouch button is an awesome feature. I am not seeing it when I open my photos via my IPad. Is this feature only available on the MacBook Pro? Is there a way to do this on the IPad?

[@macmost]

Yes, perhaps it is only Mac. If that is the case then you'd need an image editing app to do something similar.

[@DerrickW30]

Sometimes I wish the Photos app would let you adjust saturation, shadows or highlights just for selected areas of the image. For me it seems like that's about the only thing missing. I use Photoshop Elements when I need those adjustments in specific areas.

[@linhtrinh6297]

Thanks for all the tips but I found that after editing the size of my photo reduced by 1/3. Example my original photo is 8MP now is only 3.2 after editing. Is there a way to keep the original size after editing as it get blurry when I enlarge the photo. Thanks

[@macmost]

What format is the photo? HEIC? jpeg? RAW? Where are you checking to see the size?

[@johnvender]

While not as powerful as Affinity Photo and Photoshop Apple Photos is extremely powerful when it comes to image enhancement and I think good enough for lot of people. It is also easier to learn and the automatic adjustments often work very well. I use Affinity Photo because I sometimes take photos in the ProRAW format and sometimes need the extra capabilities like masks and layer blend modes but if I want to enhance a photo quickly Photos does the job well.

[@notlimey]

Is there a way to actually crop - that is, remove something on the edge of a photo? For example, sometimes I take a screen shot to send to someone and it includes my menu bar at the bottom and top and I want to crop those out and leave only the photo - right now I have a separate non-Apple program to do that - Graphic converter

[@macmost]

Yes. Just use the cropping tool for that. Or, since you are talking about screenshots which are probably files and not in your Photos library, use Preview which also allows you to crop. No need for a third-party app for just cropping.

[@notlimey]

@@macmost Thanks!

[@seattlebeard]

Any chance you could recommend a photo tool that isn't Photoshop?

[@macmost]

Yes. kzbin.info/www/bejne/nHjKc5ake6ihfM0

[@suriyaprakash5975]

Great photos editing tutorial. Awesome