Sometimes it can be difficult to know what to do with all the photos you’ve captured.

Taking them is easier than ever. But storing and organizing them all in different folders still manages to be an experience filled with complications, despite the wonders of modern technology.

That’s where the Photos App comes into play. Underlying its simplicity is a powerful set of features that provides the most advanced and immersive way to find, edit, and share your best shots.

Were going to be looking at the Photos App with an emphasis on photo editing, of course, as we’re going to run you through Vectornator’s Photos App integration and why it’s going to save you time while designing.

What is the Photos App?

Apple’s Photos App is where all of the amazing photos that you’ve captured are stored.

Sounds simple, right? But it’s a lot more than just a digital display of all your snaps. The story of Apple Photos starts way back in 2002, with Apple’s famous CEO Steve Jobs, who saw the importance of introducing an all-in-one program to let users catalog, edit, and share their digital experiences.

This new app called iPhoto was revolutionary for its time. It’s kind of amazing how well that initial offering worked, though at the start, it was clearly lacking many of the features that were added throughout the years that created the app we all know and love today.

One library

The Photos app is built around the concept of a unified library, so any photos you take on your phone or tablet will automatically sync with your computer and vice versa (or any combination thereof).

To make their app completely seamless, Apple has cooked up a simple but ingenious interface that looks similar on all devices.

But you should be careful, because your pictures aren’t stored in the cloud automatically. But Apple does use its cloud-based infrastructure to sync all your photos while keeping the actual picture files stored on your individual devices.

Photo management simplified

With Photos App all your photos are automatically organized in folders based on time and location data.

It also automatically looks for faces to populate the People category. You might be surprised at how well it does it!

By one tap, you can organize your images by Photos, Moments, Collections, or Years. Moments displays your images like day-to-day activities, Collections shows photos in larger groups, and Years (as the name suggests) literally showcases an entire year’s worth of images at once.

It’s all super simple and intuitive.

More than just your own photos

It’s worth reminding you that Photos for Mac can store any flat bitmap - not just your own photography. So you can use it to stash screenshots, graphics from the internet, GIFs and so much more.

You have single-click access to key content, which is grouped by type in Selfies, Live Photos, Portrait, Long Exposure, Panoramas, Time-Lapse, Slo-Mo, Bursts, Screenshots, and Animated. Quite a mouthful!

Let us do the heavy lifting

The core principle of Vectornator has always been simplicity.

Since we are a OS-only tool, it comes as no surprise that we wanted to give you seamless access to your photos while designing. So you keep your workflow running smoothly, without worry.

This integration will also allow you to maintain one photo library rather than two. This will save storage space and will also save you the hassle of having to switch between tools when your mind should be fully immersed in creating.

And because the Photos app automatically syncs between devices, it’s possible to have a truly mobile designing experience.

How to use it in Vectornator?

Start using your photos in your designs by adding them to Vectornator in just a few easy steps.

Either insert the image by opening the Library Popover and then select Photos. This will open up a window showing your device's camera roll aka all the files in the Photos App. Simply tap / click on your desired image or images and insert them into your document.

If you fancy a drag & drop and you’re an iPad user, you can do that too with the Split-screen View, and dragging your photo straight from the Photos App to your canvas.

You can add elements on top of your images like text, vectors, or other photos (collage style), but arguably the most fun thing you can do is vectorizing your photos and turning them into painting-like masterpieces that you can edit on, and on, and on.

It may sound like magic, but we just call it the Auto Trace feature. Learn how to use it by reading this Learning Hub section dedicated to the art of vectorizing.

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Want to find out how to access and use a massive library of beautiful curated photography? You read that right. It's possible with Unsplash, and that is our next integration we're going to discuss!