Trips With The New Apple Photos
Who, What, When, Why, WHERE? The unsung hero in photo management.
Apple Photos has a new look with iOS 18 and MacOS Sequoia. Over the next few weeks I’m going to dig into the changes and offer insights about my favorite features and how you can make the Apple Photos ecosystem work better for you.
When something happened has always been the biggie in photo organizing. We’re so used to timelines in our lives that it’s natural to look for photos based on when they were taken. Swiping through the camera roll is just a way of skimming through the timeline of our photos to get to such-and-such a date. Or so it seems.
Really, it’s about recognizing events . . . moments . . . that bookend the one we’re looking for. If we really were hunting for a date we would go right to the years and months view to zero in on the date we want and ‘boom’ there would be our picture.
The thing is that we remember photo moments in random ways. It might be a significant date, like an anniversary, or a milestone event like graduation. It may be defined by friends you saw, or what you did. Skydiving? And although most of us can pin down the month, at least over the past year, beyond that may be less clear.
I know the family went to Lake Placid in the spring, but which year?
The ‘new’ Apple Photos in iOS 18 and MacOS Sequoia has changed the game by offering up your photos in a whole new way, and I like it. The new concept is most obvious on the iPhone where you now get a single page with multiple search modules laid out at your fingertips. You can still see the most recent photos, but are also offered the other navigation choices in large, inviting widget-like buttons that deliver multiple ways to get to ‘that’ photo.
To be clear, there’s nothing about the new user experience that changes any organizing you’ve already done. Same pictures and Albums, just presented somewhat differently.
Over the next few weeks I’m going to be posting about some of the Apple Photos changes in detail so stay tuned. For today, let’s go back to that vacation in Lake Placid and look at the new Apple Photos collection called Trips.
TRIPS
I’m a Places guy. And a lot - most - of my memorable photos happen outside my home. Whether at the local beach or in Seattle, the first thing I think of is the place that moment/picture happened. Because the iPhone can geo tag every image, finding those pictures quickly was just a matter of tapping the places tab and zooming in on the map location. Perhaps even quicker is simply searching on the location name. Searching on Places has always been a lightbulb moment for my clients who thought that swiping through the All Photos view was the only way to find a picture.
That said, Places was always a little obscure, tucked away in the sidebar. You could get caught up in the scrolling trap before thinking much about better search alternatives.
Now, with the new Apple Photos layout, you get reminded about locations not once, but twice.
First, the old Places group is replaced by a new collection simply called Map. It sits toward the top of the Mac Photos sidebar about the same place as Places used to live. When you select Map you get a classic map or satellite view of the earth with photos you have taken grouped in their captured locations. Zooming in a group will expose sub-groups right down to a street level location. Alternatively you can just select a location and choose the Grid view to see all the photos you’ve taken in that spot.
On the iPhone Photos, Map is part of the new Pinned collection. And where it is depends on where you put it. Just like widgets on the iPhone Home Screen, Apple now lets you customize the Photos Home Screen so you can put the collections you most use at the top and move the others down or hide them altogether.
But I mentioned that Places had become 2 items, you’ll recall.
For some time, Apple Photos does this thing where it interprets time and location to create “moments.” Collections that are related to some theme or event. And one thing I’ve seen is that it can identify a vacation or other travel event by (presumably) seeing that photos taken over a block of time away from where we normally are (i.e. ‘Home’) are trips.
And so it is that the new Apple Photos offers Trips collections to get you quickly to those special times when you travel.
Trips is in the sidebar on Mac Photos and one of the customizable elements on the iPhone Photos app. Given how much we like to relive and share our travel photos, using machine learning to automatically curate our travels is stellar. I think that Trips is bound to win over anyone who’s been overwhelmed by the post-production of their travel adventures.
Also, Trips collections default to a summary view of what Apple evaluates as the best pictures. No signage, receipts or parking spots. But if you want to see everything taken, you can choose that. There’s also a choice of viewing the collection as stills or seeing it as a movie with music, like the Photos Memories we’ve come to know.
All in all, the upgraded Map feature and the Trips collections are a brilliant update to photo management on your iPhone and Mac. Stay tuned for more about the Apple Photos refresh in coming weeks.
If you would like to work with me, here are two ways I can help:
COACHING & CONSULTING • Get expert, patient help to bash the overwhelm and build excitement using your photos. Become comfortable taking, organizing, and sharing your pictures with family and friends. Create a photo collection that captures your life and provides enjoyment every time you view it.
PHOTO MANAGEMENT • If you need a photobook, video/montage, or other project done for you, I can help. Overwhelmed by an out of control photo collection that you can’t face? I’m your guy. You’ll get decades of experience as a photographer and graphic artist, with over 12 years as an Apple Photos expert and certified photo manager. Let’s talk.
Thank you, Paul! I look forward to your posts!