Paul, I use the Epson FF-680W to scan photos. I then batch them through Topaz Photo and it does a nice job of removing noise and face recovery. The results are subtle, which is what I want and do not make the images look like a major edit was performed on them. I’ll give Photo Sharing a try! I don’t want to over complicate the situation so hopefully this simple solution will do it for me.
Thank you, Todd.
P.S. I went back and found your article from August 2025 on Photo Sharing.
Using the Shared Album solution is working out fine with one exception. I have an Album of images in Photos and this Album has the photos in chronological order. When I upload it to a Shared Album that order is ignored and the images are in a “random” order. It seems that because these images were scanned and then I put them in order it is not retained when loaded into the Shared Album unless I do it one photo at a time and repeat the process and that will retain the order. Otherwise it is working fine! Thank you for leading me down that path.
Glad you like it. So I think the thing with the sort order is that that the common/intended purpose is to share a narrative in chronological order. If you’ve got a bunch of scans then they probably aren’t dated sequentially. When you manually move them around, the Shared Album doesn’t see that, only the EXIF date stamp. If you sorted them first and scanned them in order, that should resolve it. Or you could use something like A Better Finder Attributes to create a date sequence after the fact.
Like several things in Apple Photos, it there are outlier tasks that need to be tweaked to work within the toolset but if you can anticipate that it works really well. I hadn’t considered the implications of scanned images for Shared Albums, but since I try to adjust the dates to be chronological in the All Photos Library View anyway, I guess I’ve never run into that issue.
Paul, In your poll you have four choices and left off the fifth option that I would have selected “All of the above”.
I just completed scanning about 2,000 photos from the 1980s and 90s. I ran them through Topaz Photos to clean them up and then added them to Apple Photos.
Now I came across another problem that Apple has not solved. I want to share my entire Photos Library with the immediate family so they can “view only” the Library. As the family archivist I don’t want anyone to have to the capability to accidentally delete photos, just view them. I checked with several of the AIs and they have confirmed this is something that Apple is missing. AI has recommended keeping the Apple Photos Library and duping it to Google Photos for sharing. Do you share your Apple Photos Library?
Todd - You’re right. I should always include “All of the above” in a multiple choice poll. I was just hoping to narrow down pain points for Apple Photos users. What’s your take on Topaz? How much does it help?
As for sharing, my answer is yes I do and I use Apple Photos Shared Albums.
I’ve been involved in shared photo databases a couple decades and what I’ve found is that there’s a wide gap between the ‘dream’ of a shared gallery and the reality of it. Particularly for families.
First off, no one really wants everything in the shared gallery. There needs to be a librarian like you to curate and manage it. Not everyone is cut out for that. The task of repurposing to and managing a whole separate database like Google Photos or Smugmug or Amazon Photos or Mylio adds a lot of friction to the task. It requires a commitment both from the curator to keep it up and from the subscribers to actually use it.
In my experience, if you are already an Apple Photos user, Shared Albums hits the sweet spot for ease of creation on one end, and ease of access on the other. You can create and add photos in seconds. Your family gets an alert right in Photos the next time they open it. Which is like always, right?
You can choose to limit downloads and comments, but who cares? The Shared Album is independent of your own Photos Library so whatever they do is doesn’t muck up your collection.
I like it.
Here’s a post I did that went into it in more detail. If you search on Shared Albums. Thanks for asking!
Paul, I use the Epson FF-680W to scan photos. I then batch them through Topaz Photo and it does a nice job of removing noise and face recovery. The results are subtle, which is what I want and do not make the images look like a major edit was performed on them. I’ll give Photo Sharing a try! I don’t want to over complicate the situation so hopefully this simple solution will do it for me.
Thank you, Todd.
P.S. I went back and found your article from August 2025 on Photo Sharing.
Let me know how that works for you. Pluses and Minuses.
Using the Shared Album solution is working out fine with one exception. I have an Album of images in Photos and this Album has the photos in chronological order. When I upload it to a Shared Album that order is ignored and the images are in a “random” order. It seems that because these images were scanned and then I put them in order it is not retained when loaded into the Shared Album unless I do it one photo at a time and repeat the process and that will retain the order. Otherwise it is working fine! Thank you for leading me down that path.
Glad you like it. So I think the thing with the sort order is that that the common/intended purpose is to share a narrative in chronological order. If you’ve got a bunch of scans then they probably aren’t dated sequentially. When you manually move them around, the Shared Album doesn’t see that, only the EXIF date stamp. If you sorted them first and scanned them in order, that should resolve it. Or you could use something like A Better Finder Attributes to create a date sequence after the fact.
Like several things in Apple Photos, it there are outlier tasks that need to be tweaked to work within the toolset but if you can anticipate that it works really well. I hadn’t considered the implications of scanned images for Shared Albums, but since I try to adjust the dates to be chronological in the All Photos Library View anyway, I guess I’ve never run into that issue.
Paul, In your poll you have four choices and left off the fifth option that I would have selected “All of the above”.
I just completed scanning about 2,000 photos from the 1980s and 90s. I ran them through Topaz Photos to clean them up and then added them to Apple Photos.
Now I came across another problem that Apple has not solved. I want to share my entire Photos Library with the immediate family so they can “view only” the Library. As the family archivist I don’t want anyone to have to the capability to accidentally delete photos, just view them. I checked with several of the AIs and they have confirmed this is something that Apple is missing. AI has recommended keeping the Apple Photos Library and duping it to Google Photos for sharing. Do you share your Apple Photos Library?
Todd - You’re right. I should always include “All of the above” in a multiple choice poll. I was just hoping to narrow down pain points for Apple Photos users. What’s your take on Topaz? How much does it help?
As for sharing, my answer is yes I do and I use Apple Photos Shared Albums.
I’ve been involved in shared photo databases a couple decades and what I’ve found is that there’s a wide gap between the ‘dream’ of a shared gallery and the reality of it. Particularly for families.
First off, no one really wants everything in the shared gallery. There needs to be a librarian like you to curate and manage it. Not everyone is cut out for that. The task of repurposing to and managing a whole separate database like Google Photos or Smugmug or Amazon Photos or Mylio adds a lot of friction to the task. It requires a commitment both from the curator to keep it up and from the subscribers to actually use it.
In my experience, if you are already an Apple Photos user, Shared Albums hits the sweet spot for ease of creation on one end, and ease of access on the other. You can create and add photos in seconds. Your family gets an alert right in Photos the next time they open it. Which is like always, right?
You can choose to limit downloads and comments, but who cares? The Shared Album is independent of your own Photos Library so whatever they do is doesn’t muck up your collection.
I like it.
Here’s a post I did that went into it in more detail. If you search on Shared Albums. Thanks for asking!