Exporting From Mac Photos

Learn the various ways you can export files from the Photos app on your Mac. You can do a simple drag-and-drop, but you'll get more options if you use File, Export. You can also export directly to another app, or save as a PDF.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to export photos from the Photos App on your Mac.
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So before I show you all the different ways you can customize how you export photos from the Photos App let me assure you that if you want to do it just really quickly you can. The simplest method is you are just in the Photos App here and you can just drag and drop to the Finder. This could be the Desktop or have another Finder window open right here. Just drag the photo over and then you can see it appears right here. If you want to export several photos you can select several of them, I'm going to hold the Control key down and select them. Drag and you can see it's exporting three and now there's going to be three photos right here in the Finder. This could be in this folder here or in the Desktop or anywhere you want. 
Or perhaps you want to go directly into another app like Pages or Word or maybe into an email message. So, for instance, here I am composing a message in the Mail App. I could go to Photos. I could select a photo or photos that I want. Drag and drop right into the message here. It adds it into the message. Note that when you do this in Mail always pay special attention to the image size here. All to often I get people that select small and the image is too small to be usable especially if it is a screenshot. So you want to choose medium or a larger file but better quality, of course, and large or really good quality, or the actual size if you want to send somebody the image so they can actually add it to their photo collection. You want to give them the full resolution image. 
But what about if you really want to customize how you export. There's a lot you can dig into. So instead of dragging and dropping first select the photo or photos that you want and let's go and edit it first. Now you don't have to edit it to export. But a lot of times you really should. Even if you want the original photo to just stay like it is in your Photos collection you'll see how you can edit it here and easily get back to having the original here. 
So let's go in here. I'm going to double click, then I'm going to go to Edit, and here I can do a variety of different things. For instance, I can adjust the lighting or color. I can go to Crop and crop it here and get it looking just like I want. I can go to Filters if I like and choose a different filter. Let's do that one. Done. Now this is what the photo looks like in my Photos Library. So now when I drag and drop to export I'll actually get this. But when I'm done the export I can always go back in and when I go to Edit notice there's Revert to Original. I'll just Undo all those changes and give my original photo back. Or right here, you can always go to Image and then you have Revert to Original here without even having to go and edit it. 
So next let's go to the Export options. I go to File, then Export. You can see I can export one photo, the normal way to do it, and it has a keyboard shortcut, Shift, Command E. There's also Export Unmodified Original for 1 photo. So this would ignore all of those changes and actually export the original image. The exact file that was imported in from your camera or that came from the iPhone or whatever. We're going to select Export 1 Photo here and now we get all these controls. First, we can select the photo kind. Usually you want to use JPG. That compresses the image but is slightly glossy. So it's not pixel perfect but chances are when you took the photo you saved it as either JPG or HEIC which is slightly glossy as well, so exporting as JPG isn't really that big of a deal. If you select JPG here you can click there and now you can select the Quality. So you can have Low, so lower quality but smaller file size, High to Maximum which is really high quality but a larger file. Definitely much larger than low. The other thing you can choose here is Size. You can go small, medium, large, or full size. These will create a smaller image just like we saw there in Mail. So Small will create a much smaller image. Maybe if you wanted to send somebody something really quick that's not meant to be saved anywhere. You probably want to go with Large or full size image if it's meant to be added to somebody's photo collection or you want them to have the best quality. 
But you could also go to Custom. Then you get the options to choose the width or the height and it will adjust the other dimension so it stays with the correct ratio. So you could, for instance, say I want it to be 1000 pixels wide and then whatever height would then match that. So the photo looks the same. You could also go dimension and say I want one dimension to be 1000 pixels and the other dimension to be smaller. So 1000 at the maximum size either height or width.
Let's say we go with Large here so we have a JPG of high quality large. We can decide what to include. This will be included in the metadata of the photo. So things like title, keywords, and caption. We can also get to decide whether location information is shared. So if there's GPS info imbedded in the photo whether that would be included in the export. So in many cases say we're sending to a friend or family member of course you want to include that. But sometimes when posting to social media you may want to have that removed especially if it's a photo of say your work or home or something and you don't want somebody to be able to download that photo from social media and figure out exactly where that photo was taken. So that's a privacy feature more than anything. 
So you could choose the File Name. Either use the original file name, the one that the camera has assigned to it. You can use the TItle if you assigned a title to that photo. Otherwise it will default to the file name. You could also do Sequential. So you can include the prefix, like photo, and if you had selected and exported ten photos it would number them 1-10. You could also just do the same thing but using the Album Name. So if you're exporting from an Album that would work there. So in this case it's the Album Test. I would export Test and then put the number after each photo. 
You could also decide on a subfolder format. So using the  Moment Name, that's usually like month and year or something similar, and then it would put each one of those in a folder. So if you say selected 100 photos and they were spread out over seven different moments you would get seven folders with the different images from each moment in the proper folder. 
The best way to fully understand the File Name options and the subfolder format options is to experiment. It doesn't hurt to select some photos you have now. Try exporting to the Desktop or a temporary folder and see the different results you get when you choose the different options. Even try that with Sizes. Try that with Quality and see what you get. A few minutes of experimentation right now can give you a really deep understanding of all these options. So when you need to use them you know exactly which ones are right for that situation. 
I just want to point out that there is some other photo kinds you can choose. Tiff and PNG are lossless and they usually are not great for photos. JPG is best for photos. But if you're exporting something like a screenshot then PNG will give you the highest quality. Or if you're exporting to bring it into another app like PhotoShop, Pixelmator, or one of the Affinity apps or something and you want the highest quality there because you're going to be adding more layers and doing more editing and things, then you may want to consider PNG or some photographers prefer Tiff. 
There are a couple more export options if you want something different. For instance I'm going to select all these photos here, ten of them. One thing I could do is I could go to File, Share instead of Export. I can AirDrop all ten of these photos to a nearby Mac or iPhone. It's kind of equivalent to Drag and Drop but to another person or device. I can also go to Share and Mail. It will take all ten of those photos and you could see now they are in one mail message. Again I could adjust the size here. You could do the same thing to Messages to send somebody a message with a photo. Another thing you may want to do is go to File, Print. What this can do for you is export a PDF. So if you want to take a bunch of photos, like these ten right here, you can set the Options. So, we can choose an option like this where there is two on each page. Or maybe an option like this where there is a whole bunch on one page. Whatever you want to do. I'm going to leave it here with this option and change it so there are fewer columns so it spreads out over several pages like that. Then I'm going to go to Print and instead of printing I can go PDF. Then either Open in Preview and I can Save it out of Preview, or Save as PDF. You can give it a name here if you want. I can save it out. Now I've got this PDF file here. Open it up in Preview and see the different pages as a PDF. So this is a convenient way to send a group of photos to somebody as a single file. Or maybe for some work reason you need to send a bunch of photos inside a PDF like this.
So there's a whole bunch of different ways that you can export your photos from the Photos App. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 14 Responses to “Exporting From Mac Photos”

Debbie

2 years ago

The ability to add info comments on your photos in Photos is really cool but I cannot figure out how to export that EXIF data with the photos. I can only view it on my iPhone or iPad inside photos. When I export photos from my desktop, the "info" field does not go with it. When I import into Lightroom, the info does not go with it. Can you help?

Gary Rosenzweig

Debbie: That's because it isn't EXIF data. EXIF data is part of the image file. The data you add in the Photos app is part of your library.

Jim Owens

HI Gary, I would like to share a movie with a friend by exporting it to a thumb drive. It is too large to email. Any suggestions? Thanks!

Jim: Directly from Photos? Just use File, Export and save it to that thumb drive.

Gary, thanks for the prompt response. When I ry to export it, I get an error message 'ing_2279.mov Unknown error(0)'. Going to Finder does not give me additional useful information. Looks like an operator error of some kind - me.

Jim: Try exporting to your internal drive first, then copying the result to the thumb drive.

Tried exporting it to Macintosh HD. Same error message.

Jim; Then something is going on that is unrelated to the thumb drive. Try creating a simple iMovie project and exporting that. Rule out things. Troubleshoot. Or, take it to the Genius Bar for an expert look.

Thanks, Gary. Given your excellent responsive manner, I have joined the Club MacMost. As you suggested, I will troubleshoot without filling up your Response Column. Ciao!

Alexander Konczey

How do I export a slide show into a memory stick do my friend can watch it on digital frame

Alexander: You'll need to consult the documentation for the digital frame to see how to do it for that particular product. Probably formatting the card a specific way, then putting the images in the right format, organized on the card in a specific way.

Arik

Hi Gary,
How do I export photos gps location into Lightroom classic? It seems that none of the options in photos “share” menu work?!
Do I miss something?? Thanks!

Arik: File, Export. Then export Unmodified Originals. Then bring those files into Lightroom.

Sorry, I meant “export”. I checked the result of the exported file, in Preview, and indeed the gps location is there. However - once imported to Lightroom- the gps tag is missing. So it’s a Lightroom issue, not a photo. Thanks anyway.
Arik

Comments Closed.

Exporting From Mac Photos

Comments: 14 Responses to “Exporting From Mac Photos”

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