How to edit and export multiple pictures at once from Photos app on Mac

It might be a rather simple section, but the macOS photo application has some editing tools that make it go beyond a simple program to save our photos. Whether it’s via iCloud or locally, Photos allows us to enhance the most common aspects of our images without requiring a master’s degree in digital photography.

You may have tried these editing tools on a single photo before, but did you know you can? Apply the same edit to multiple images at once? We’ll see how to achieve this with the ease we’ve come to expect from Apple.

Yes, you can copy and paste tasks as well as data

Let’s say you have several very similar photos and you want to apply the same edit to all of them, but without having to do it repeatedly and one at a time. So similar:

Select one of the photos by clicking on it and click “Edit”:

Now apply the editions you want (I reduced the color contrast to black and white for example) and press the OK button to confirm the edition:

From the main screen, right-click (or CTRL+click) the edited photo. In the context menu that appears, click Copy Editions:

Now select the rest of the photos you want to edit and click Paste Changes again from the context menu. You will see that what you edited on the first photo is applied to the rest of the photos you selected:

Now what if you want to export those photos including those editions? No problem, just click on the “File” menu, the “Export” submenu and then on “Export X-Photos”:

If you click on the second option “Export unmodified originals of X-Photos” you will do the same but without the changes made, which we do not care about in this particular case. Now all you have to do is confirm the format of the photos you want to export and the metadata you want to include in them. When you’re done, click the “Export” button:

You will now be prompted to choose a folder to export the photos to et voilaYou will receive them in your chosen format:

This can save you a lot of mechanical work, especially if you want to practice how an edit can affect different types of photos, or if you want to massively adjust several old photos to improve their quality. Remember that if your library is in iCloud, any changes you make to your photos will be applied across all your devices.

image | Rirri

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