It used to shock me when I saw a friend whip out their iPhone to share a recent picture and they went straight to Messages.

Really?

That’s like using Apple Pages to trim your videos.

I understand. For years we moved around photos as email attachments - still do, for that matter - when it wasn’t very easy to save them to our Photos Library, much less find them. Whatever was the point of entry for shared media became the ‘go to’ place to find it again.

But that’s ancient history, like the venerable cordless home phone. Photo management today is much more elegant and worth adopting.

First off, Apple has made saving photos and videos to the Photos Library really, really easy.

In Messages, a tiny Download icon accompanies every piece of media you receive. Just tap it and the image is saved to your Apple Photos Library (APL). Saving email attachments from the Mail App is almost as simple. You Press and Hold (iPhone/iPad) or Right+Click/2-Finger+Click (Mac) on the image and choose Save Image from the menu. Your image(s) will get saved, lickety-split, to your APL.

There are 2 big advantages to this system.

First, it puts these shared photos into a place where they can easily be found in multiple ways. Not the least of which is going to the Recently Saved collection. If you regularly enjoy shared pictures and save them to photos, this is a slam-dunk winner over scouring your Messages/Mail for a picture each time you want to re-share them. You can also tap into Recently Viewed which shows a reverse history of every image you’ve looked at. If it’s a grandchild’s first step, it’s likely that photo is at the top of the list.

Of course in Photos you can also search by people, date, location, Shared, Favorites, and more. You can add these photos to a special Album. The only thing you get in Messages/Mail is that it’s grouped by sender. Somewhere.

The other advantage is that you clean up your Messages/Mail cues as you go. Even if you don’t delete the attachments right after you Save, someday you’ll likely need to for more storage space. Knowing that your system is to Save or Delete photos when you receive them, you can group delete all those attachments at once without regret.

Now we all get pictures with a short lifespan - those goofy shots of someone’s day or social memes - that we don’t want to “clutter up” our APL. I get that. But the system can still help with that.

If the attachment is a “one off” - something you smile at but won’t ever share or look at again - then enjoy and delete it on the spot. There’s no value in having it clutter up your Photos LIbrary OR your Messages feed. I get those all the time.

On the other hand, I also get pictures with a limited life span and I DO save those to APL. If it’s something to buy or repair or share with certain people, having that in my Library is a reminder for both the task and a reminder to delete it when the value is gone. Your Photos Library is a living document, not a museum. Pictures regularly come and go as a natural part of the process. Having them collected in one well managed place makes that possible.

If you are feeling overwhelmed by your photo collection, start by getting all your pictures in one place with a system that really works.

You’ve got this.

And I’m here to help.