Apple Photos

Frederick wants to create a central location to house all the photos and videos for everyone in the family. Leo says if he wants to be responsible for it all, then Apple Photos can handle it. But everyone may want to keep their own accounts. Google Photos has similar features to Apple Photos, but it's cloud-based. And he can share unlimited free storage up until June 1st. Then each person can upload to a family album from their own account. Then everyone can upload and see the album. It's a great way to do it without having the burden just on the creator.

Brent has photographs in a whole bunch of different locations online and on his computer and wants to get them all together into a central location. He wants to get a desktop computer that can really help him to organize and back it up. Leo says that a good Windows computer is Dell. But really, desktop computers are a commodity. So it almost doesn't really matter what kind of computer to get. Leo would recommend Mac over Windows though, and a new  5K iMac is a good solution for this. Then buy Apple's iCloud storage for the backup. Or Dell and Microsoft One Drive.

Charles is noticing several of his recent photo files aren't as large as they should be on his Mac Mini. Leo says that if Charles is using Apple Photos for an App to store his photos, to r/c on the photos library, and then select Show Package Contents, he'll see photo folders, including the "originals" photo folder. That'll verify his originals are there.

Gary has an iMac, and there's a large percentage of JPGs he can't preview. What is that all about? Leo says if the dimensions read "0" by "0", then the Mac thinks that the files are damaged and need to be repaired, even though Gary can read them on a PC. He should try opening them in Preview first. If he can read them there, then he can export them. Gary can also open them in Picasa, and so Leo suggests exporting them out from there. That can fix them and the Mac apps should be able to open them from there.

John is frustrated that he can't delete the pictures on his phone without deleting them from iCloud. Leo says that if he selects "optimize phone storage" in settings, it will delete it on the phone without deleting it on iCloud. But he'll have to select "Keep Originals" on his Mac so it doesn't delete there.

Scott has a Windows 7 laptop and he's tired of dealing with all its problems. As a result, he got a MacBook Air for Christmas. How does he transfer all his data from the Windows laptop to the MacBook? The Migration wizard didn't really work for him.

Leo says to bypass all of that and just move it over manually. It's the best way to do it. He should just plug in an external drive, formatted for Windows. Then drag and drop his "My Photos" folder over. Then he can connect it to his Mac, open Apple Photos, and import them.

Craig wants to know what photos app to use for his camera? Leo says that he likes Google Photos because it will do an automatic sync backup of all his photos every day. The problem is that his phone has its own photo app as well and so he'll end up with more than one copy of a photo, and it's hard to organize them that way. And it won't pick up where he left off. Apple's Photos app does. But Android phones don't have that capability and neither does Google Photos.

Kurt is in a love/hate relationship with his Apple Products. He got his iPad wet and he tried to get it back by letting it sit in a bag of rice, but it didn't work. Apple will replace it for $300. He chose to buy an Android tablet instead. Leo says that Android tablets are fine and Samsung's tablets are very good. But there are much fewer tablet-aware apps compared to what Apple has. Often times, an Android tablet doesn't use the app very well because the app isn't written to take advantage of it.

Judy has a 15" MacBook Pro Retina, but she's been having issues that Apple Support can't solve. She can't edit any photo in Apple Photos. Apple thinks it's a software problem. Leo thinks this is a problem with the cache. Leo suggests exporting out all of her photos into another folder and move that to the desktop. Then she can delete the Apple Photos library and reimport her images. She should make sure it's the unmodified original, and not the thumbnails. Chances are, Judy's photo library became corrupt.