Mastering Apple Photos: Photos is the free app included with every Mac, and in a scaled down version, every iOS device. It’s designed to be an easy to use but powerful application for organizing and editing all your digital content. In this 4 week class, we’ll cover the full range of what Photos can do, and how it can make your post processing easier and more efficient. You’ll learn how to import and organize, make basic adjustments, learn about the advanced editing features, and how to use plugins to extend the power of Photos, and how to share your photos and videos.

Course Outline:

Lesson One: In the first week, we’ll cover importing and organizing your photos. If you use an iPhone or other iOS device, importing is already done for you via iCloud syncing. But, there are others ways to manage your images. We’ll talk about how to get those photos and videos from your devices into your Photos Library, and the importance of backing that Library up.

When you’re dealing with thousands of images and videos, it’s not always easy to find the ones you’re looking for. Photos gives you many organizing options, from creating albums, to tagging files with keywords, ratings, and face recognition, location, and more. We’ll talk about how to use these filters to quickly get the content you’re after, and how to add them to your content during or after import.

Lesson Two: We’ll cover all of Photos basic editing tools – Adjusting details, white balance, sharpening, cropping, and more. How to use and modify the Auto adjustments for many of the tools, and how to use the Retouch tool to clean up problem spots. I’ll provide sample files so you can follow my adjustments and experiment with them, or you can of course use your own images. There’s homework! You’ll upload up to 3 of your own images after making adjustments, and we’ll review the changes made, and offer suggestions for further edits.

You’ll also see how to use Photos basic video tools.

Lesson Three: We’re going to go deep on the adjustment tools offered by Photos – Levels, Curves, Noise Reduction, Black and White conversions and more. Once again, I’ll provide sample images to go with the lesson so you can follow along. We’re also going to look at extending the power of Photos with extensions. These extensions give you even more options for your photos, like creating HDR and panoramas, blending multiple photos into one, and more. You’ll have homework again this week – up to 3 more of your own images using some of the advanced options covered in the lesson.

Lesson Four: Sometimes you want to go beyond looking at your images in Photos. This week we’ll cover how to share them with the world (or just your close friends). Uploading directly to social media, creating slideshows, sharing with iCloud, printing, and options for creating projects like photo books and calendars.

I’ll also cover how to use your photos in other applications, like Photoshop, Affinity, and others, and have your Photos Library automatically update with the changes.

Instructor: Jon Canfield

Jon is the author of a number of books on digital photography and a popular instructor at workshops where he is known for his knowledge of raw image processing and printing. He has spent the last six years with Apple working on the cameras used in iPhone and iPad. Prior to that, Jon contributed to digital imaging products at Microsoft. He has consulted with a number of companies, including Nikon, Canon, HP, and Pantone.