Of all the reasons people reach out to me for help, you might be surprised how many of them do so because they are feeling a little guilty—about photos! And by photos, I mean both Photos (the program that comes on your Mac/iPhone/iPad) and photos (the pictures you take with your phone/camera).
Let’s take a look at the kind of photo guilt you might be carrying around. It typically falls into three categories:
The number of pictures you have
The number of duplicates you have
A lack of organization (or too much!)
I’m here to tell you there is no need to feel guilty about anything to do with your pictures!
First, quantity: There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having lots of photos. If you’re worried that too many pictures will make it hard to find what you’re looking for, or that they are taking up too much space on your device—worry no more!
Since iPhoto was first introduced, and continuing as Photos, Apple has added feature after feature to make it easier to find your pictures. You can now quickly search for pictures by:
When the photo was taken
Who or what is in the photo
Where it was taken
And so much of this is handled automatically! The date is automatically captured when the picture is taken. Assuming your settings are correct, the same is true of geographical location. Photos will also identify faces (even pets!) in your pictures. Assign names to those faces, and you can easily search for people in your photos.
We can now also search for specific objects and activities in Photos. Try searching for pizza, skiing, or dog, or tractor and see what you find!
Combining all of these features lets you quickly find, for example, pictures of Bob with a dog in 2014. You don’t have to do any organizing or cleaning up to make that happen!
Consolidating duplicates is also easy, with Photos assuring that the best, highest-quality image is preserved. And if your quantity of photos is maxing out your device storage, the solution may be as simple as making sure that the “optimise storage” setting is turned on or upgrading to the next storage level for a few more dollars a month. For most people, that is a low-cost and low-stress alternative to spending hours upon hours clicking through and deciding which of your treasured images to delete!
If you’d like to say goodbye to your photo guilt and need help, please reach out. In a one-hour session or less, I can make sure your time stamp and location settings are turned on, help you identify and consolidate the faces of family and friends that appear in your images, and show you how to easily search and find them! We can also take a look at your albums and simplify those if needed.
As always, if there’s anything else you need help with regarding your Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AppleTV, printer or any related software, please email me at hugo@heriz-smith.com or text/call me at (207) 691-7788 (US) or 07943 199484 (UK).