Tip, Tricks and Articles for iPad, iPhone, Mac
iCloud, Windows, Android, Office 365, Dropbox, Apps, and more

Have you been suffering from Photo Syncing problems on your iPhone, iPad and/or computer?

When you plug your iPhone (or iPad) into your computer, are you told that there are no photos to import - even though you know that you just took some new photos! Where are your photos? ​

This question comes up very regularly from Mac users. Just this week, I assisted a client who needed to get here photos downloaded from iCloud Photo Library without turning on iCloud Photo Library on her Mac. (Here's a separate article describing how to do this.)

Continuing the Back-to-School theme of recent articles ...

If you, like me, are going to very soon be filling out the student public transport concession application, you may well be thinking about getting new ID photos for each child needing this travel concession.

These days, instead of paying a small fortune for ID photos printed by the post office, chemist or camera shop, I use an app on my iPhone and to take the photos, and print them on our home printer.

This year, I have found that my previously trusty ID Photo app is no longer available after the upgrade to iOS 11 - so have had to go in search of a new one for this year's photos.

The app that I have landed on is Biometric Passport Photo - to check it out, just tap/click on the link. It is free if you just want to print single photos.

Does anyone have a different Photo ID app that they prefer?

Dropbox is a wonderful app that allows you share your files between all your devices - mobile devices of any type, and computers (Mac or Windows)

When the Dropbox app is downloaded and installed on a computer or mobile device, one of the steps in the setup is to select whether Dropbox should upload your photos to your Dropbox storage.

Many people inadvertently turn on this import setting, and then find that they quickly get a message saying that their Dropbox is full and that they need to buy more storage.

While it can be handy to have Dropbox sync'ing all your photos (if that's what you want), many people prefer not to use up the free allocation with photos.

So how do you stop your computer and mobile device from putting your photos into Dropbox?

Step-by-step instructions are provided in two handy hints for iTandCoffee Club members - one for Dropbox on the iPad/iPhone, and the other for Dropbox on your computer (Mac or Windows).

​Membership has great benefits!

Are you interested in learning more about The iTandCoffee Club and the great content, services and members-only offers that membership brings?

At the July Free Friday, during the information session on 'The Cloud' and 'iCloud', we touched on the topic of using iCloud to share albums of photos.

We didn't have a lot of time to cover this in any detail during this session, so this week we have included a couple of Handy Hints for club members - one for Mac, and one for iPad and iPhone - on how to use iCloud Shared Albums.

An iCloud Shared Album is an album that you create in the 'Shared' area of your Photos app on the Mac or iPad/iPhone.

This 'Shared' area is an area of your iCloud that you can choose to 'turn on'.  If you don't see it, you may not have chosen to enable it.

Albums that are created in this area can be then shared with other iCloud users, or even with those who don't have iCloud.

The great benefit of iCloud Shared Albums is that, by just adding photos to a shared album, others you nominate will be able to see the photos - without you have to text, email or use other ways of 'messaging' the photos to them.  

While there are other 'cloud storage' options for your photos, the benefit of iCloud Shared Albums is that it is integrated with your Photos app - so that you can see all photos in one app, instead of having to use different apps (as would be the case if you share photos using another cloud service).

Members can find out more about iCloud Photo Sharing by selecting the below buttons.  Not yet a member of The iTandCoffee Club?  Find out more here ».

Handy Hints - iPad and iPhone 

• Creating an Album in Photos on your iPad and iPhone
• Sending an individual photo from the Photos app
• Send several photos from the Photos app
• Saving photos and documents received in Mail on the iPad and iPhone
• Separately control focus and light in the Camera app
• Scan your credit card and avoid typing in the details
• Taking better photos with your iPhone and iPad
• Camera and Photos: Quickly taking a photo on your iPhone or iPad
• Accessing the Camera App from the Lock screen
• How to see your iPad and iPhone photos presented on a map
• Getting edited iPhone (or iPad) photos across to your computer using iCloud Shared Streams
• iOS 10 - Accessing the Camera App from the Lock screen
• iOS 10 - Draw and write on photos + a new 'Edit' symbol
• Separately control focus and light in the Camera app
• Hiding photos from your timeline in the Photos app
• How to access 'edit' options for photos on your iPad and iPhone
• Search for your photos by location, date, object and more
• Tag your Favourite photos and view all of them in one place!
• Getting back a photo or video that was accidentally deleted
• Taking better photos with your iPhone and iPad
• Sending an individual photo from the Photos app
• Importing iPad and iPhone photos to a Windows computer
• How can I delete photos from my iPad and iPhone in bulk using a Windows computer?
• Deleting iPhone and iPad photos in bulk using a Mac
• Take a photo while you are videoing
• Take a photo of whatever is on your screen - screenshots
• Saving a photo you see in Facebook on your iPad or iPhone

Blog articles - iPad and iPhone

• My first iMovie video on my new iPhone 6 Plus!
• Do you hate having to scan and send documents?
• Password Keeper apps for iDevices
• A great app for tracking data usage on your iPad and iPhone
• Have you discovered 'app extensions'?  Here are some really great extensions for the Photos app.
• I seem to get two copies of photos on my iPhone when HDR is on
• How can I print several photos on a single page from my iPad or iPhone
• iOS 9 offers a new way of deleting photos in bulk from your iPad and iPhone
• Great slideshows for learning all about taking and managing photos on your iPad and iPhone
• Are your 'bursts' of photos causing your iPad, iPhone or Mac to 'burst its storage banks'?
• One of the most important things to do to take a good photo 
• Trying out some interesting new Photo Book options
• Can I change the date of a photo so it appears in the correct Year in Apple's Photos app?
• How to add music to a Photos slideshow when you have Apple Music
• How Apple's Photos app 'saved the day'!

Don't you hate that you normally have to choose between photographing and videoing something - eg the family singing happy birthday or a baby taking first steps?  

​Well, did you know that you can take photos while you are videoing on your iPhone or iPad?

Here is a handy hint recorded a while back, showing you how easy this is to do.  

Now, I know this one might be a bit too obvious.  But it's amazing how often I forget to do it and miss out on getting the best photo I can.  

Because we are constantly handling our iPhones (or other smartphones), it is so easy to end up with dust, dirt or fingerprints all over the camera lens.

Each of the photos shown in this article suffers from the effects of the lens being dirty.  Sometimes, there is no opportunity to re-take them!  Especially when the sun or lights are involved, the result can be a very 'washed out' photo.

Just give the camera lens a quick, gentle clean with a lens/screen cleaning cloth to remove any dirt, dust or fingerprints.  You'll be amazed at the difference it will make to your photos.

When preparing a slideshow of photos last week, using the Photos app on the Mac, we were wanting to play a particular music track with that slideshow.  This slideshow was just going to be shown to family as part of the celebration of the life of a loved one.

It seemed that this should be an easy thing to do.  We had completed the selection of photos for the slideshow and it was time to add the finishing touch - the music, a beautiful song by Ed Sheeran.

Frustratingly, we found that when we tried choosing the iTunes track that we wanted to use, it was 'greyed' and not able to be selected.

I thought that because I had subscribed to Apple Music, I would be able to choose any track from my music library to use with my Photos slideshow. I thought all I needed to do was download the required track using iTunes, so that it was stored on my computer.

Unfortunately, this wasn't the case.  Apple Music tracks are protected by DRM (digital rights management), and (apparently) can only be streamed using iTunes - they cannot be used in Photos slideshows.  

I am not sure if this will change some time in future, but in the meantime we needed to find a way around this this limitation, as it was essential that we be able to play the chosen track with our slideshow.

Luckily,  we found a solution.

My daughter had recently purchased the CD version of the artist's album, and we were able to import the track from the CD to iTunes as an MP3 track.

Magically, the track then became available for selection in the Photos app, and we were able to play that beautiful track with our beautiful slideshow.

If you would like to find out more about how we imported the music as MP3 or how we were able to select the song as backing for the Photos slideshow, why not come along to our "Photos on the Mac" class which will be running again soon.  

Find out more about this class here ››