Selecting Photos and Videos

In this video, we will look at the different ways we can select photos and videos in the Photos app on the Mac. It may sound simple; you just click on a photo to select it, but let’s say you want it to select multiple photos. How do we do that? Well, let’s find out, let’s go to my Mac.

So I’m in my Photos app. I’m looking at my library here. I want to select a photo to select a photo. All we have to do is just click on it. When we click on it, we get a blue border. It is selected. Pretty simple. Let’s say I wanted to select a different photo. We’re going to go to this photo here. When I click on it, it turns blue. It is selected, and the previous photo that I did have selected is no longer selected. So those are the basics of selecting a photo or video. We just click on it to select it.

But now, let’s say you wanted to select multiple photos. I do want to keep this photo selected, and I want to have this photo selected. How do we do that? All we have to do is use a few key commands depending on what we want to do. In this case, I want to have this photo selected, and I want to have this photo selected. So I hold down the Command key, and when I’m holding it down, I click on what else I want to have selected. And we can see that we have it selected. It has a blue border around it. And I have this photo selected. It has a blue border around it. If I want to add this photo to it here, to the selection, I hold down the Command key. Again, I click, and now we can see that I have my three photos here selected. To deselect any one of these, I hold down the Command key. Let’s say I no longer wanted to have this one selected here; hold down the Command key. I click. It is no longer selected, there’s no blue border around it, but these two photos here are still selected. So the Command key is key to selecting multiple photos. All I do is just hold down the Command key, and I go and click on any of the photos and videos I want to select. Any of them that are selected, if I click while holding down the Command key, they will become deselected.

Now let’s say I wanted to select an entire row. I want to select this photo here and also all the photos here in between. So I go over to this last one here, and I want to select all of this row. So how do I do that? Well, what I could do is I could go to the first one here, I select it, I hold down the Command key, and then I select all of the other ones. That works pretty good for a small number of photos. But let’s say I wanted to select two or three rows. Now, now I have to go and do that at least a dozen times, maybe 20 times or more. Well, there’s an easier way of selecting photos that are contiguous or next to each other. This time we’re going to use the shift key. So I go back over to my first photo here; I hold down the shift key. When I hold down the shift key, what it’s going to do is select all the photos in between my first and last photo. So I have this photo selected and then let’s just go over here for simplicity. I have this photo selected; when I do that, it will also select or the photo in the middle here. So now I click on this one, and we can see that all three of those are selected.

Let’s expand that a little bit. I’m going to go back over to my first one here. I want to select everything in this row here. So I go to the last one here. I hold down the shift key, and now it’s selected everything in that row in between the first two photos that I selected.

So now we’re going to really expand this. I want to select this photo here and every photo in between that photo and this photo here. Again, I could use the Command key, but I’d have to click on each one of those individually. Or if I hold down the shift key and I click, being that I have this first one here selected, when I click on this one here, it’s going to select every photo and video in between.

Now I want to deselect a couple of these. We’re going to take this a step further. I want to deselect this photo here. Well, if I click, it’s going to deselect everything. Well, what we just learned earlier? The Command key. When I hold down the Command key, and I click, it will only deselect that one photo. So now, all of those other photos are still selected. As you can see, they all have a blue border around it, but this photo does not. So I go over to this photo here of Beth. I want to deselect it while keeping all of the other photos selected. Command key, click, now it is deselected. I want to select it again while keeping all of the other photos selected, Command key click, and now that one is selected along with all of the other photos and videos.

So now, what I’m able to do with all of these photos and videos is move them into an album. I can add keywords to them. I can favorite them, and it’s going to favorite all of them that I have selected.

So that’s how we select our photos, including selecting multiple photos in the Photos app on the Mac. All we have to do is just click to select the photo. I click on another one; it deselects the first photo. It selects the second photo. If I hold down the Command key, it’s going to keep my original selection and keep selecting them. And then if I have anything that is selected while holding down the Command key, it deselects it. And then, if I use the shift key, what it does is it selects everything in between the first photo I selected and the last photo I selected. And now we can see we have seven photos selected.

So that’s how we select our photos, including selecting multiple photos, in the Photos app on the Mac. I believe this is key to keeping your photos and videos organized. You want to favorite multiple photos, all you have to do is just select multiple photos, and then you can favorite them all at the same time. You want to move several photos into an album; you can select them all and move them all at the same time to that album.

So that’s how you can select photos, including multiple photos and videos, in the Photos app on the Mac.