Your library

The library is where you land after signing in: on the left, where to look — All photos, your folders, your albums, the albums others have shared with you, Similar photos, the trash — and your photos on the right. This page covers organizing them, looking through them and acting on them. Finding a particular photo has its own page, Searching your library.

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Folders

At the top of the left column, All photos shows every photo you have, in a folder or not, and Unfiled under it holds the photos that are in no folder — the files you upload on their own from All photos, or from an album, which adds them to that album too (a folder you upload becomes a folder), and any restored from the trash after their folder was deleted. Opening the library takes you to All photos — or to Unfiled, if the last place you picked was a folder. Under Folders is your folder tree. Folders nest as deep as you like; one per shoot works well, because a whole folder — with the folders inside it — becomes an album to share in one step.

Hover a folder and click ⋯ beside its name — or right-click the folder — for what you can do with it:

On a phone or tablet ⋯ is always shown. Unfiled isn't a folder you made, so it can't be renamed, moved, deleted or made into an album. To move a folder out of every other folder, pick Top level in Move to…. The buttons beside Folders search folder names (the search icon opens the box; Esc clears it, a second Esc closes it), refresh the tree, expand or collapse every branch, sort folders by name or date, and make a New folder at the top level.

Opening a folder shows the photos filed in it, and above them, under Folders, the folders inside it as cards: each with its three newest photos, its name and what it holds, counting everything inside it — 214 photos · 3 folders. Click a card to open that folder; its ⋯, or a right-click, has the same actions as the tree. When the folder has photos of its own the cards fold to two rows, with Show all 12 folders under them; a folder that holds only folders shows every card, with a line saying its photos are in the folders. The cards aren't shown in Unfiled, on the map, or while a search or a filter narrows the photos.

Open a folder inside another and the folders above it are written before its name at the top of the photos — Wedding / Reception — each a link back up to it. The tree follows wherever you go, with the folder you're in selected.

Albums

Folders are where your photos are kept; albums are what you show people, and only an album is shared. Under the folders, Albums lists yours: ones made from a folder, and ones you put photos in yourself — from any folder, from All photos or from a search. A photo can be in as many albums as you like, and putting it in one moves and copies nothing. Click an album to see its photos; Albums covers making and sharing them.

Below your albums, Shared with me lists the albums others have shared with your email address, and the ones you kept from a link — see Your albums. Click one to open the album.

Each place has its own address

All photos, every folder and album, Similar photos and the trash each have their own address in your browser, and a photo open in the viewer is added to the address of the place behind it. Reloading the page keeps you where you were, your browser's Back and Forward move between the places you opened, and a bookmark takes you straight back to a shoot. These addresses open only for you, signed in to your account; to show photos to someone else, share an album.

Looking through your photos

The buttons at the right of the toolbar change how photos are laid out:

None of them crops a photo. Beside the first three, S, M and L set the tile size. On a narrow screen all of these fold into one menu. An album has the same buttons except Map, and the layout and size you pick are the same everywhere in your library. Point at a photo to see its name and file type, when it was taken, its pixel size and file size (and how it was made, if it isn't an upload); its full record is one click away.

The sort menu orders photos by date taken, date uploaded, date modified, name, file size or file type, and the arrow beside it flips the order. The library starts in Date taken order, newest first: the grid groups the photos under month headings, and the year menu beside the sort — All years until you pick one — narrows them to a single year; pick All years again to bring back the rest. A photo whose file has no date taken is placed at its upload date and marked with a calendar icon; a photo with neither goes under Undated. While you search, the menu says Best match — the closest results first — and picking any other order, Date taken included, puts the results in that order instead.

Picking from a burst

Click Similar photos on the left, below the folders, for the whole library — or, for one shoot, Find similar photos in its folder's ⋯ menu. Shots taken within a couple of minutes of each other that look alike are shown as one group. The recommended photo — the one the photo analysis rated highest, then the sharpest — is marked Recommended; click another to keep that one instead, then Keep one, move 3 to trash — the button counts them — moves the rest of the group to the trash.

A photo up close

Click a photo to open it in the viewer. The arrow keys — or the arrows at its sides, or a swipe on a phone — move through the photos without closing it (on the map, through the photos of the cluster you opened). The arrow at the top left, Esc or your browser's Back button closes it. Move or delete the photo you are looking at and the next one takes its place.

Click the photo, or press Z, to see it at 100%: one pixel of the photo to one pixel of your screen, where you check the focus. Click again to fit it back. A photo smaller than your screen opens at its real size, centred — never enlarged to fill the screen. Drag to look around, and pinch or scroll with Ctrl held — or press + and − — to zoom in steps; 0 fits the photo and 1 shows it at 100%, as Fit and 100% at the right of the line under it do. The next photo opens at the same zoom and the same spot, so you can go through a burst frame by frame. The viewer shows a screen-sized copy first and loads the full-resolution photo as soon as your screen or your zoom needs it.

The line under the photo shows where it is in what you are looking through (23 / 148), the camera and lens, and the exposure; at its right, whether you are seeing the preview or the full size, the zoom, and four swatches for the background around the photo — dark, grey, light, or matching your theme. Press L to step through them. ? lists every key.

Press I (or the ⓘ button) for the photo's details, in a column beside it — a sheet from the bottom on a phone:

• Caption — in an album, what you wrote under the photo there (Albums)
• When and where — the date and time it was taken, the place its GPS position falls in, and its folder
• The exposure — aperture, shutter speed, ISO and focal length, the camera and lens, then exposure compensation, white balance, metering and flash
• In this photo — the scene, its tags (click one to search your library for it), the text found in it, and how many people
• Assessment — a 1–5 star rating with what works, what to watch and edits to try
• File — dimensions, size, format, where it came from, and the photo it was made from
• Every tag the camera wrote into the file, folded away at the end

The viewer remembers whether the details were open and which background you chose.

The bar above the photo puts it in an album (Add to album…), marks it as a favorite (F), downloads the original, opens it in the editor, and has the rest under ⋯: run a preset or an AI action, rename, move, copy or delete it. Each of them acts on this one photo, even when it is part of a selection.

A photo's actions

Point at a photo — or tab to it — and two buttons appear in its top-right corner: the heart (a favorite's stays shown), and ⋯, which opens everything you can do to that photo. Right-clicking the photo opens the same menu. On a phone or tablet both buttons are always shown.

• Edit, Process…
• Download
• Add to album…, Rename…, Move to…, Clone
• Delete

If the photo is one of several you have selected, the menu acts on the whole selection and says so — Delete 3 photos, Process 3 photos… — and the actions that work on one photo at a time (Edit, Rename) are greyed out.

Acting on many photos

Tick the box on a photo's corner — drag a box around several, or tick the one in the toolbar for everything in view — and a bar appears with what you can do to the selection:

Process opens one dialog for both. On one side is what you can make, grouped by where the photos are going — Share & post, Print, Improve, Convert & keep, then the AI actions; on the other, a proof of your choice on your own photo. Save to, the folder the results go to, and the button, which says what it will do — Process 12 photos — stay at the bottom. Presets walks through it.

On the Free plan, the AI actions in Process carry a Pro mark: they are part of Pro and Studio. When your storage is full, the actions that make new photos — Edit, Process and Clone — are unavailable until you free up space or move to a bigger plan.

Presets and AI actions always make new photos — next to the originals, or in the folder you picked under Save to — and the originals stay as they were. A progress card in the corner counts the photos done, and View job opens the details. Every run, finished or still going, is under Jobs — the button beside Upload, which shows how many are running.

Favorites

The heart on a photo — or F in the viewer — marks it as a favorite. To see only your favorites, switch on Show only favorites at the top of Filters, or type is:favorite in the search box; a Favorites chip above the photos shows it is on.