In September of 2014, when Apple released iOS 8 for iPhone and iPad, Apple began an overhaul of the way that its products manage photographs. On April 8, 2015, Apple completed that transition by releasing an update to the Mac operating system, OS X Yosemite 10.10.3, which introduced the new Photos program, a replacement for iPhoto. You can still use iPhoto for now, but Apple doesn’t plan to update it anymore, so its days are numbered. Photos, on the other hand, is not only the supported program, but is also a much better program with great new features, such as being much faster to use, even if you have tens of thousands of pictures, plus with Photos you can make all of your pictures available on all of your devices. Thus, I recommend that anyone who uses a Mac start moving from iPhoto to Photos, especially if you also have an iPhone and/or iPad.
The problem is that Photos is new. Many of the ways that you used to do things in iPhoto are different in Photos. Indeed, the entire philosophy for how the software organizes photos is different. Knowing that I would need to learn how to make my way through this transition, I bought, and posted a review of, an ebook called Photos for Mac – A Take Control Crash Course by Jason Snell. That book is still only available in preview form, with the full content expected to be released very soon, but for now that book won’t tell you all that you need to know about Photos.
In the meantime, California attorney David Sparks recently released a 2.5 hour video called Photos Video Field Guide. It costs $9.99, and I had planned to buy a copy because I’ve always been impressed by the other videos and iBooks produced by David, but he was nice enough to send me a free copy to review. I finished it over the weekend, and I loved it.
I enjoy reading books and articles when I am trying to learn something new, but sometimes there is no substitute for having someone actually show you something. Photos Video Field Guide is a screencast, so you see David’s computer screen, iPad screen or iPhone screen while you listen to him explain exactly what he is doing. This is an excellent way to show how Photos works. Sure, I could have eventually figured out many of the features of Photos by just fiddling around with the software, but now that I’ve watched David edit and manipulate photos while explaining what he was doing, I no longer need to waste time figuring out the basics.
While I most wanted to watch this video to learn about Photos on the Mac, this video also does an excellent job of explaining how to use Photos on the iPad and iPhone. Even though I’ve been using those apps since last Fall, I learned a ton about those apps that I didn’t previously fully appreciate. One of the key advantages of Apple’s new approach to photographs is that you can now view and seamlessly work with your photos across platforms — Mac, iPad and iPhone. Thus, it makes perfect sense that this video pays attention to all three platforms.
The video also does a good job of appealing to a spectrum of user levels. David walks you through everything, so this video is perfect for a complete novice, but I found the entire video interesting and educational even though I consider myself an advanced iPhoto user and I even use Photoshop a little. I can recommend this video to you regardless of your digital photography skill level.
In addition to showing off how to use all of the features, David does an excellent job of explaining the new philosophy of Photos. I’ll admit that I had been upset that Apple got rid of Events, which was the central focus of iPhoto, and something that I felt very comfortable using. But now that I understand Apple’s new organization philosophy in Photos of using years, collections and moments, along with the new super-fast search features of Photos on the Mac, iPad and iPhone, I finally get it. There was a moment this past weekend when I was listening to David talk and I all but heard a bell ring in my head (much like Don Draper in the Mad Men finale Sunday night) and suddenly I got it. (And I’ll refrain from making further references to Mad Men for those of you who have not yet watched it on your DVR.) For me, finally understanding why Apple did what it did in Photos, as opposed to the old approach in iPhoto, was perhaps the best part of watching the Photos Video Field Guide.
The video is fully bookmarked, so after you finish watching the video if you want to go back to, say, the section on Searching Photos in iOS, just click on the chapter icon in QuickTime Player (or whatever you use to watch videos) and you can jump right to 01:18:51 where that starts.
Rather than me continuing to wax poetic about this video, let me stop and simply refer you to the very generous 30 minute sample of the Field Guide provided by David. This is essentially the first 30 minutes of the screencast, so you can watch this, and if you like it, you can buy the full video to watch the other two hours and have a copy that you can save on your computer to refer to in the future.
The Photos Video Field Guide is an excellent way to learn all about Apple’s new approach to photographs and all of the powerful things that you can do in Photos on the Mac, iPad and iPhone. I really enjoyed this video, and if you enjoy taking photographs, you will too.
Click here for Photos Video Field Guide by David Sparks ($9.99).