Photos for Mac and iOS: The Missing Manual

Chapter 2. Importing Pictures and Videos

With Photos up and running, you’re ready to import your pictures and videos to populate your library. After all, why doom your digital mementos to a life lived only on an iOS device or memory card? Once they’re in Photos, you can do amazing things with them if you invest a little time.

The easiest stuff to import comes from your iPhone and iPad—the process is practically automatic—but you can also import pictures from digital cameras, scanners, your iCloud photo streams, and even websites you visit. And if you’ve got any pictures and videos tucked into folders on internal or external hard drives, or archived on CDs, DVDs, or other storage devices, importing them is just a drag-and-drop away.

If you previously used iPhoto or Aperture and you imported those libraries into Photos, then you already have a bunch of pictures and videos in Photos to play with. (If you haven’t yet done that, flip back to Chapter 1 for info on how to get it done). This chapter teaches you how to import additional content from sources other than your old libraries.

But first, a quick tour of the Photos workspace is in order.

The Two Faces of Photos

Photos for Mac gives you two different ways to view and work with pictures and videos. The first option looks a lot like Photos for iOS—you get one giant, uncluttered window with tabs that let you change your view (see Figure 2-1). The Photos tab displays all your pictures and videos in chronological order; the Shared tab lets ...