3 Great Photo App Tips for iPhone, iPad, & Mac That You May Have Overlooked
The Photos app is a major part of the Apple ecosystem, providing a ton of powerful capabilities for managing and editing photos whether youâre using Photos on iPhone, Mac, or iPad. While you may already be familiar with some great tips like editing photos for color, cropping, applying filters, and creating folders for your photos, there are a variety of lesser known features that are super useful in the Photos app.
Weâre covering three of the most useful overlooked features that are available for Photos app for iPhone, Mac, and iPad.
1: Copy & Paste Edits for Bulk Image Editing Made Easy
Making edits to your photos is a one of the most useful functions built into the Photos app for iPhone, Mac, and iPad, but did you know you donât have to individually edit each photo you take? Instead, you can use a copy and paste edits feature to make edits to one image, and then carry over those edits to as many other photos as youâd like to apply them to.
This feature is the same on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, though how it works is slightly different for iOS & iPadOS compared to MacOS. Basically after you make edits to your picture in Photos app, do the following:
- On iPhone and iPad, select the (âŚ) button and choose âCopy Editsâ, then select other photos you want to apply the edits to, select (âŚ) again and choose âPaste Editsâ
- On Mac, right-click (or got to the Edit menu) and choose âCopy Editsâ, and then select other photos you want to apply the edits to, right-click again and choose âPaste Editsâ (or go to the Edit menu and select Paste Edits there)
Itâs that easy to apply edits to many photos, making bulk image editing an absolute breeze with Photos app whatever the platform is youâre accessing the app from.
2: Identify Objects, Plants, Flowers, & More
Did you know the Photos app is able to identify objects by using built-in machine learning and AI capabilities? Many people miss this feature, but itâs incredibly useful. You can identify everything from animals, to objects, plants, flowers, and more, just select to open the photo you wish to identify, and then choose the little sparkly leaf button.
This feature pairs really well with the iPhone in particular since you can use it while youâre on the go, out and about in the world. Surely youâve come across a situation where you see something, perhaps a particular plant or flower, and you wonder âwhat on earth is that?â With iPhone, just take a photo of the thing you wish to identify, and then open it in Photos app and tap on that little sparkly leaf icon to identify what it is.
3: Select & Copy Text from Photos
Modern versions of Photos app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, support a super useful feature called Live Text which allows you to select and copy text from within a photo.
For example, perhaps you took a picture of a sign, or a menu, or a document, you can open that picture in Photos app, and then select the text to copy it, and paste it elsewhere.
This feature works the same on Photos app for every Apple device, simply just open the photo, then tap and select the text, and choose to Copy.
You can then paste the copied text where ever youâd like; into Notes app, Pages, Messages, Mail, anywhere you can paste text.
If youâve been using iPhone, iPad, and Mac for a while, you may already be familiar with this feature, but many people are unaware this capability exists. Give it a try, it works really well, and you
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If you enjoyed these tips, donât miss out on our large archives with tons of Photos app tips and tricks here.
Do you have a favorite lesser known tip or trick for the Photos app? Share it with us in the comments!
I canât find the âsparkly leafâ to identify items in Photos on Mac (Photos version 9, MacOS 14.4.1, MacBook Pro 2022)
iPhone SE2, iOS 17.4.1. No leaf icon. I even hit the âIâ icon (which you didnât mention) and still no luck. Is this not available for the SE2?
If iOS canât identify the object in the photo, the leaf icon will not appear.
An easy way to test this is to take a photo of something fairly obvious/common, like a rose, and then tap on the sparkly leaf icon to look it up.
Itâs a neat feature when it works, but itâs not perfect!
I have an iPhone SE2 on iOS 17.4.1 and the âsparkly leafâ has worked on it for quite a while now. I canât think why it doesnât on yours unless itâs regional.