Thumbnail View Options

In this video, we will take a closer look at the thumbnails we have in the Photos app on the Mac. Let’s go to my Mac.

So I’m looking at all of my photos and videos. I have my Library selected, and I’m looking at all of my photos. When we’re looking at all of our photos, we can see all of our photos and videos as thumbnails. We can also see the same view when we’re looking at an album. If I swipe up here and take a look at my 2020 Photos album, you’re going to see they are thumbnails again.

When we’re looking at our thumbnails, we have a couple of different ways to view these thumbnails. Right now, I am viewing them as what I would call cropped. They are square. It’s just cropped. In every photo, every video is the same size. I cannot see the original aspect ratio. These photos and videos are not the same size, but again, I’m looking at them as cropped; I can see them all the same size. It gives a nice layout here, but if I did want to view each photo and video’s original aspect ratio, what I would do is go up to this little icon here. When I click on this, it’s going to toggle that view. I click on it, and now I can see each photo’s aspect ratio, each video. So we can see that this one was shot in portrait. This one here is panoramic. In comparison, this one here is landscape. So I can easily see the aspect ratio of each photo. When it’s in this view, I can also see each photo’s title, when it’s in this view. To change it back to our crop view, where everything is square, all we do is just click on the little icon here, and it switches it back again.

I have the same options when I’m looking at all of my photos here in the Library. We can see that they are cropped. They’re square, but it changes it back to my aspect ratio when I click on this icon here. So those are the two different views we have with our thumbnails.

Now I’m going to go back to my crop view. This is my favorite view.

We can also easily change the size of these thumbnails. If you have a trackpad, all you have to do is just pinch with two fingers. I pinch, I have a trackpad here, and I can zoom in and out. You can also go to the slider here and drag this to the left or right to change the size. Again, we have the same option when we’re looking at an album. I click on the album here to show it, and here is my slider.

What other options do we have here? Well, when we’re looking at our thumbnail, I can easily see which one has been favorited. Any favorite photo or video is going to have a heart in the lower left-hand corner. If I no longer want to favorite it, I just click on that little heart, and it is no longer favorited. Click on it again; it favorites it. So let’s say I wanted to favorite this one. I go to the lower left-hand corner, click on the heart, and it is favorited. So we can easily favorite our photos and videos, right from our thumbnails.

We can also easily see which ones are movies. Over in the lower right-hand corner, you’re going to see a timestamp. This is how long that video is. So this tells me that this video here is 12 seconds long. This video here is six seconds long. If it doesn’t have that timestamp, it is not a video. So when I go to this photo here, this thumbnail here, I know it’s a photo because there’s no timestamp there. I go over to this thumbnail here; there’s a timestamp that tells me that it’s a video. It’s 46 seconds long.

We can also see if it is a burst of photos. With the iPhone, we can take a burst of photos. It’ll take multiple photos in a very short time. I’m going to go back to my Library here, where I can see all of my photos. You’re going to see that this photo here or this thumbnail here looks like a stack of photos. If we go to the top, you’re going to see there’s a stack of photos. This tells me that it is a burst of photos. So there are multiple photos within this thumbnail.

Lastly, we can also see if a photo has HDR applied to a photo or video. When we look at this photo here, you’re going to see us as HDR in the upper left-hand corner. That’s telling me that there is HDR applied to that photo. HDR, meaning High Dynamic Range.

So that’s a look at our thumbnail views that we have with the Photos app. We have a couple of different ways to view our thumbnails. We can view the original aspect ratio, or we can view them cropped as a square. We can zoom in and out using a trackpad, or we can use a slider in the upper left-hand corner. When we’re looking at our thumbnails, we can favorite a photo or video. We can easily see if it’s a video by looking for the lower right-hand corner’s timestamp. We can see if it is a burst of photos, it’ll look like a stack of photos, and then we can see if HDR is applied to it.

So that’s how we work with our thumbnail views and the Photos app on the Mac.