The ease with which we can take dozens of photos every day has led to a problem: since many of us now carry around so many photos, it can be easy for them to be ignored and forgotten as we move on to new adventures and new pictures. After all, when was the last time you actually took some time to look through your media library?
The best photo programs are aware of this issue, and there are workarounds so that old photos and movies can be resurfaced without having to spend a lot of time browsing through garishly colored thumbnails. There are various ways to delve into your existing collections, but some of these tips require a little bit of prior planning and only apply going forward.
Apple Photos
Launch the Photos app on your iPhone or Mac. Then, to make it simpler to explore the past, choose “Library” and “Months or Years.” To increase the number of photographs and videos in each batch, you can make additional selections. When looking for certain dates, such as “May 2018,” the search box is useful; or “2015,” or any other aspect of your life that you wish to relive through digital material.
Apple Photos has a “memories” function that chooses pictures and videos from the past that it believes are important to you (pictures of people that feature a lot in your library, for example). On your iPhone, tap the “For You” tab to find these memories; on macOS, click the “Memories” link in the left-hand navigation pane.
Google Photos
A Google product would be expected to perform well in searches, and this is also true of Google Photos. Include a statement like “January 2016” or “last May” in the search field at the top of the web interface, for example, or on the Search tab in the mobile app. If you wish to start at the very beginning of your image collection, the app is even capable of understanding a search word like “oldest photo.”
As long as your phone marked a location when it took the necessary photos, location searches also function. To relive past vacations, try looking up places you remember going to. You may also use search terms based on specific memories, such as sunsets, lakes, pubs, gondolas, or whatever else comes to mind. What Google Photos is able to identify may surprise you.
Naturally, our closest pals appear in many of our favorite pictures: There is a row of faces you may search for when you click within the search box on the site or select the Search tab in the mobile app, and there is also an option to browse through all the people (and pets) in your photo and video library. The search is an excellent technique for going deeply into the past because it is intelligent enough to detect how people change over time.
You can also turn on the Memories function to routinely bring back highlights from previous events and time periods if you want Google Photos to handle the labor-intensive process of retrieving your greatest photos. In the mobile app, tap your account profile image (top right), followed by Photos settings and Memories. On the web, select the cog symbol (top right), then Memories.
Maintaining order
Several of the methods we’ve discussed above are applicable regardless of the photo organisation software you prefer: On Flickr, for instance, you can perform searches for locations, people, and dates. To make photographs easier to find, there are options for adding tags and descriptions. If your photo and video library is more organized, you will have a better chance of finding photos you really like again.
You can perform certain actions in both Apple Photos and Google Photos, like favorite a photo. This lets the app know that this is an image you truly appreciate, making it and similar pictures more likely to appear in recollections. It also lets the app know that you can always access this image and your other favorites by clicking or tapping on them. It would be even better if you could add tags and descriptions as well.
