For many of us, the Photos app is the most important app on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac because it is the place where we store our most precious memories. This year, the Photos app saw major changes in iOS 18 for the iPhone and iPadOS 18 for the iPad. Photos for the Mac also saw some important changes, although it doesn't seem quite as dramatic.
If you want some help understanding everything that makes the Photos app so useful, there is a great resource for you: Take Control of Photos by Jason Snell. Jason has been writing about Apple since the 1990s and is the former editor of Macworld, so there are few people in the world who know more about Apple and its products. And as someone who has been a writer and a podcaster for many years, Jason is well-known for his ability to explain things in a way that makes sense to everyone. That is one of the reasons that I so frequently link to articles by Jason in my Friday In the News post.
Like all books in the Take Control series, this is an electronic book, available in PDF and EPUB formats. That means that you can read it on nearly any device, including the large screens of an iPad or a Mac. The book is $14.99, but if you own a prior version of the book, the upgrade is only $5.00. And anyone can download a free sample to get a feel for the book by browsing through 43 of the over 200 total pages. (Take Control Books provided me with a free copy of the book for this review.)
Back in 2015, Jason wrote a book for Take Control called Photos for Mac (my review). It was well done and I recommended it. Over the past decade, Jason has improved and updated his guide to using Photos, releasing Take Control of Photos in 2018 (my review), a second edition in 2019 (my review), and a third edition in 2022 (my review). This week, he has released the fourth edition. Not only is it the best one yet, but it is especiaally useful this year because, as I noted above, Photos itself has some major changes this year. So many aspects of the app work differently this year, and thus it is more useful than ever to have a well-written guide to every aspect of the apps.
And I say "apps" in plural because Jason addresses Photos on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It amazes me that there are still some things that you can only do on an iPhone or iPad and other things that you can only do on a Mac in Photos, and some things you can do on all platforms but the way that you do so is different. Jason's book helps you to navigate all of this.
Jason also helps you to get the most out of the features in Photos. For example, a very useful feature in Photos is the ability to recognize faces. Once you start using this feature, it is easy to find all of the pictures with Mary. Or Susan. Or both Mary and Susan in the same picture. Jason explains how you can fine-tune this feature by helping the Photos app identify a person when it isn't quite sure about a face. And even though faces are examined separately on each of your devices, the time that you spend identifying faces is used in all of your devices. As Jason explains on page 75: "While machine-learning-based face recognition data isn’t synced via iCloud Photos, all of your personal identifications and confirmations are synced, which helps Photos keep your People views more or less in sync across your devices." Until now, I wasn't exactly sure how that worked, and now I know.
Although the focus of the book is the Photos app, Jason also addresses things that are Photos-adjacent, such as sharing your photos with others in a printed book, displaying photos on an Apple TV or an Apple Watch, and more.
Jason's book is full of pictures—download the free sample to see what I mean—making it easy to follow. It is an easy read, and you could just sit down and read it cover-to-cover if you want. But I especially like using it as a guide, jumping to the section on a specific topic whenever I have a qeustion about something in Photos or I just want to see if there is more that I can learn on some aspect of Photos.
Thanks to Jason for updating this valuable resource. We need it this year more than ever. If you or someone you know wants to learn more about the Photos app, this is a great place to turn.
Click here to get Take Control of Photos (4th edition) by Jason Snell.
