How to Annotate Your Pictures

USING MARKUP IN APPLE PHOTOS

Back in the day, I got postcards from my friends when they took a vacation. More often than not the picture would have an arrow drawn to a window in a hotel high-rise with “our room” scrawled alongside. Or a notation over the picture of the Grand Canyon’s south rim that said “Brad almost fainted!”

Ah, college days.

A picture IS worth a thousand words, but sometimes it can use a little extra something to clarify or comment on the moment. That’s where the Markup tool comes in.

It used to be that you had to export a photo to Preview, Pages, or some other app to add text or symbols.

Photos offered image-only editing tools for changing color, cropping, and retouching. Once you added graphics your choice was to either save the altered picture to some folder, import it back into Photos, or just discard it.

I did that for years until I discovered Markup hidden in the Photos Edit menu. With the OS 26 redesign, Markup is now more visible and sports a couple handy new tools.

If you have created layouts in Apple Pages, presentations in Keynote, or annotated PDF’s in Preview, you have likely used some of the tools in Markup. Adding shapes - circles, rectangles, arrows, etc. - text boxes, highlighting copy, sketching or drawing freehand graphics, and erasing are just some of the choices. The new version even lets you drop a magnifier loupe onto the part of a photo that you want to emphasize.

Markup is a sort of plug-in that shows up several places in the Apple ecosystem. Besides Photos, you can use Markup in Notes, Mail, and Messages.

On mobile it shows up at the top of the window in Photos Edit Mode. On a Mac, Markup is an Edit option from the Ellipsis ( 3 dots) menu.

What makes Markup so cool is the variety of graphics you can use. Some features get more advanced as you move up the device scale from iPhone to iPad to Mac, but you have access to pens, markers, highlighter, an eraser, text tool, loupe (magnifier), shapes, emojis, stickers, badges, and can even add your signature. I like iPad the best, where with Apple Pencil you also get some calligraphy pens.

Colors, sizes, positions; all of that is customizable.

If you are a social media wonk, there is certainly some overlap with the tools you’re used to when posting to platforms like Instagram, but having the finished image in your Photos Library to share however and wherever you want is pretty handy. And you can always revert to the original unmarked photo or work on a duplicate if you want to keep both versions in your Library.

Where I find Markup particularly helpful is for tech training and support. Marking up the screenshot of a display can really clarify a task or illustrate a problem. Having notations right on a picture can make a question or answer so much clearer than relying on accompanying text. When helping out a tech-challenged friend or family member a Markup photo can be a wonderful reference.

“It’s THIS button, Mom.”

And if you’re feeling nostalgic, you can even mark up a picture and have it printed as a postcard to mail to your old college friend.

If your photos are living on Apple devices - iPhone, iPad, Mac, iCloud - and you are confused, overwhelmed, or just eager to understand all the in’s and out’s of this amazing photography system, let me help you. You can see me at Bluewater Imaging. I provide easy to understand support and training to people worldwide.

Email paul@bluewaterimaging.com or book a free 15 minute phone consult HERE