New Mac owner with many questions

[Thom Hogan]

- Airdrop is your new best friend for getting photos from your phone into your Mac, and vice-versa for getting images from your Mac into your phone. For transferring images in your Mac to your phone, simply open the desired folder Using Finder, select an image file, then right-click on the file name, select "share", then use Airdrop to send it to your phone/iPad.

Hope that helps

All good, sensible advice for the OP.

Don't really understand the reason for the Airdrop. Getting images from our phones to our Mac is handled seamlessly by the iCloud, and getting photos to the phones is just as simple as dropping them in photos.

I was amused by this answer ;~).

On the one hand you want to do old-school things (photos in folders you control), on the other you let Apple do everything automatically (iCloud Photos).

The reason for using Airdrop is the same reason for using folders in the first place: you control what goes where, when, and you can respond instantly to issues. I can't tell you how many people have eventually found that automatic iCloud use messed something up for them and they didn't notice until too late.

My amusement is that you have a toe dipped, but you haven't decided to wade.

 

[Lettermanian]

- Airdrop is your new best friend for getting photos from your phone into your Mac, and vice-versa for getting images from your Mac into your phone. For transferring images in your Mac to your phone, simply open the desired folder Using Finder, select an image file, then right-click on the file name, select "share", then use Airdrop to send it to your phone/iPad.

Hope that helps

All good, sensible advice for the OP.

Don't really understand the reason for the Airdrop. Getting images from our phones to our Mac is handled seamlessly by the iCloud, and getting photos to the phones is just as simple as dropping them in photos.

It works well for people (like me ) who don't use or want to use iCloud for photo or video transfers/backups etc. It also allows a quick drag and drop of the transferred photos to any folders I want without having to use the Photos app or iCloud. For example, if I go on a family outing and shoot photos and video with my regular camera and my phone, and then want to edit a quick video in iMovie of our trip, the process is quick without having to use Photos or iCloud:

1. create a new folder (say "August 25") in Finder

2. import my photos/videos from my Panasonic S5 into the August 25 folder

3. Airdrop iPhone photos and videos to my Mac Mini then drag and drop files to the same folder

4. open iMovie, import the folder and start editing

5. export the video and share online so my distant family can view it

Photos and iCloud are fine too; one needs to use what works best or more intuitively for them. This alternative method works simply and effectively if one does not want to be dependent on Apple's apps and services, and I would argue is an easier way to keep your own file structure for your images.

For the record, I use Amazon Photos as my "cloud" backup, since it is included with our Prime service (for now), and I have two local external drives: one that stores all my images and videos with my own file structure, and one that is an external library for Apple Photos.

 

[Andy Hewitt]

I would never rite over an original jpeg. Hopefully every jpeg shooter knows that. Originals are saved exactly as they come from the camera and never changed or saved again with the same file name. #1 rule.

Indeed so, but my point was more about accidental stuff. It’s quite easy to have a brain f@rt, or a finger twitch, and get it wrong. Something like Photos does help to minimise the possibility.

Not everybody does think that way though. I’ll bet most iPhone shooters aren’t even aware that their originals are being protected that way (do they even care?).

I just like to cover bases, that’s all. Mainly because we have done, or seen, all the daft things already.

--
Andy H

 

[Bob A L]

- Airdrop is your new best friend for getting photos from your phone into your Mac, and vice-versa for getting images from your Mac into your phone. For transferring images in your Mac to your phone, simply open the desired folder Using Finder, select an image file, then right-click on the file name, select "share", then use Airdrop to send it to your phone/iPad.

Hope that helps

All good, sensible advice for the OP.

Don't really understand the reason for the Airdrop. Getting images from our phones to our Mac is handled seamlessly by the iCloud, and getting photos to the phones is just as simple as dropping them in photos.

I was amused by this answer ;~).

On the one hand you want to do old-school things (photos in folders you control), on the other you let Apple do everything automatically (iCloud Photos).

The reason for using Airdrop is the same reason for using folders in the first place: you control what goes where, when, and you can respond instantly to issues. I can't tell you how many people have eventually found that automatic iCloud use messed something up for them and they didn't notice until too late.

My amusement is that you have a toe dipped, but you haven't decided to wade.

In my feeble mind we are talking two different things that I choose to keep completely separate. Apple photos is for snapshots only of family and friends or. whatever happens almost entirely taken by either my wife or me on our iphones. The photos on my computers and in folders and saved to external ssd's are photos from my cameras that largely may mean nothing to friends and family. Only occasionally is one shared which I drop into Apple photos so it shows up like all the phone photos. So I assume you are pretty sure I am senile and not much aware of what's going on. Please continue to do so, I get a kick out of it.

 

[Bob A L]

I also have Amazon prime for sharing photos, along with google photos, apple photos and facebook. But I more often use one of my external ssd's for keeping folders of photos with specific interests and subjects. That way I am not dependent on being online to work with these photos that may not be ready to share yet. Sounds like we all have different systems and likely each one works well for the person that has done it their way for 30 years or more.

 

[Bob A L]

I am not immune to brain XXX's but hopefully I won't mess up all three (or more) copies I have of the original jpeg in different locations. Storage is really really cheap when you shoot jpegs.

 

[Thom Hogan]

In my feeble mind we are talking two different things that I choose to keep completely separate.

Apple photos is for snapshots only of family and friends or. whatever happens almost entirely taken by either my wife or me on our iphones. The photos on my computers and in folders and saved to external ssd's are photos from my cameras that largely may mean nothing to friends and family.

But that's what a lot of us are trying to point out to you. You're using a manual, arbitrary organization of "it's either an X or a Y," and then doing different things with those.

I used to think that way about smartphone photos, and I'm sorry I did. As smartphones got better and better, they began to be capable of "camera" things. Unfortunately, my phone images are scattered in Apple's way and need reorganization now.

So I assume you are pretty sure I am senile and not much aware of what's going on.

Not at all. Entropy is pernicious and persistent. If you don't start herding the cats early and often, you end up not being able to find them all at some point. My work photos are well organized and I can find anything in a snap. But I've taken a few things that should be work photos that aren't in that organization, and finding them later is a pain.

Apple seems to think AI will be able to organize and find what we want. I'm still waiting for that to actually happen.

 

[Bob A L]

Apple seems to think AI will be able to organize and find what we want. I'm still waiting for that to actually happen.

Even though I have little tolerance for AI, that is one thing that AI in Apple's hands is pretty fascinating. Just give my Mac, my ipad, my iphone a photo of one of my kids and it will instantly probably find every picture of that particular kid from birth forward. :-D

So I suppose I'm behind AI there, you have to ask me to show you a picture of that kid as he looked on January 14, 2018 and give me a few minutes, but you don't have to tell apple a time frame, but if you want a photo of that child taken on January 14, 2018 you then have to take the few thousand photos of him that Apple found and sort through for the right date. :-D

 

[Thom Hogan]

Apple seems to think AI will be able to organize and find what we want. I'm still waiting for that to actually happen.

Even though I have little tolerance for AI, that is one thing that AI in Apple's hands is pretty fascinating. Just give my Mac, my ipad, my iphone a photo of one of my kids and it will instantly probably find every picture of that particular kid from birth forward. :-D

To me, AI is just another way of "organizing," much like tags, filenames, and folders. I use all of them. This helps me narrow down the image I'm looking for. But despite my age, I still pretty much can deep dive right to the image I want without the help.

So I suppose I'm behind AI there, you have to ask me to show you a picture of that kid as he looked on January 14, 2018 and give me a few minutes, but you don't have to tell apple a time frame, but if you want a photo of that child taken on January 14, 2018 you then have to take the few thousand photos of him that Apple found and sort through for the right date. :-D

You're talking about the ungrouped photos in Photos/iCloud as opposed to your folder structure. A good folder, naming, tagging system would find that image as fast.

 

[Bob A L]

Yes, but the point I was trying to make is that Apple AI will find those photos by subject recognition, where my file system requires searches by key words in windows. So if I give Apple a photo of Randy it gives me a whole bunch of photos of my son. With my windows, I search for June, 2018, Randy, ski tournament and come up with photos of Randy skiing in a tournaments in June 2018. I could also add location like R Lake, to the windows search.

I have yet to learn how to do this with a Mac as it's all new and greek to me.

Different strokes for different folks (and computer systems)

 

[Bob A L]

I believe I may be able to manage to learn my way around this Photoscape X. I am really impressed by it initially. I did manage to loose one edited photo I saved to somewhere that I apparently didn't pay enough attention to. But may even put this on my windows if it works with windows. Don't know how it kept hidden from me, unless it is Mac only.

 

[MarshallG]

I believe I may be able to manage to learn my way around this Photoscape X. I am really impressed by it initially. I did manage to loose one edited photo I saved to somewhere that I apparently didn't pay enough attention to. But may even put this on my windows if it works with windows. Don't know how it kept hidden from me, unless it is Mac only.

If you know part of the file’s name, use Spotlight: Click the magnifying glass icon on the top left corner of the screen. A search box will appear, and type filename: myfile

(But type in the file’s name, or the part of the name you remember). By using filename:, it will search only for matching file names, instead of searching for text inside of files.

if that doesn’t work, go back into Photoscape and try File -> Open, and the last four file names should be there.

 

[Bob A L]

Thanks, hopefully this will not be an ongoing problem. This was the first trial at editing with this program and was not used to the system it uses where you need to input the save too file designation instead of just scrolling through and selecting the input file. Hopefully I'll get in the swing and this was only a total play with deal, so no importance whatsoever. This seems to be a real neat viewer/editor. I believe I will put it on my windows machines also if I can get comfortable with it. I'll play with it for a while. I only have 12-14 hours a day for the rest of my life to play with it, so we'll see. Gotta keep brain active even if body can't handle a lot of activity.