What’s new in Photos in iOS 15 and macOS Monterey

Jason Snell shared an excerpt from a forthcoming update to his book “Take Control of Photos”. Lots of detail/pictures in the excerpt, including:

To see what Apple has to say about the particular item in question, tap on the small circle in the photo, or (on an iPhone or iPad) on the Look Up option in the Info window. You’ll be presented with a floating window that describes what Photos thinks the object is, with web links for more information. Among the results that you might see are book covers, art, landmarks, plants, flowers, and even pet breeds.

And:

In an attempt to add an extra layer of context to items in your library, the new version of Photos offers even more machine-learning-based image analysis features. The info icon in the toolbar will become adorned with a couple of sparkly stars to indicate that your photo contains items identified by Apple’s new image-analysis system.

And:

One of the banner features of iOS 15 and macOS Monterey is Live Text, which lets you select text that is present in images, whether it’s text in a screenshot or on a picture of a sign or a menu or a t-shirt. And of course, it works in Photos.

To select text in an image, just imagine that you’re selecting text in a text document. On a Mac, you’ll see that when you move the pointer over the text in your image, it turns into a text-selection cursor. On an iPhone or iPad, tap and hold on text to select it and bring up text-selection controls.

I’ve been playing with Live Text all morning. In the iPhone Camera app, yellow brackets will appear around any recognized text, and a Live Text icon will appear in the bottom-right of the frame. Tap the Live Text icon and you’ll be able to copy the text, etc. Very cool.

Great writeup by Jason Snell. Here’s a link to his book. Though the new edition is not yet up (it’s in copyedit, should go live in a few weeks), folks who buy the book now will get the update for free.