How to Share Pictures from Photos on Mac

Do you have a great picture on your Mac within Photos app that you want to share? Photos for Mac makes sharing pictures, videos, and other images very easy, and you share a picture from the Mac directly to another user through messages, email, iCloud, social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr, or locally to another nearby Mac or iOS user through AirDrop.

You can share any picture this way as long as you have the image, video, or picture stored within the Photos app on Mac. Whether the pictures were copied from an iPhone or camera to Photos on Mac or imported into Photos on Mac doesn’t matter, the pictures just must be contained within the Photos application in Mac OS. It’s worth pointing out that we’re focusing on sharing pictures here, but the Photos app also holds videos and Live Photos, which can be shared the exact same way.

How to Share a Picture in Photos on Mac

Want to share a single photo from the Mac? Here are the steps:

1. Open the Photos app for Mac if you have not done so already



2. Select the picture you want to share (you can select a thumbnail, or share directly from an individually opened photo)
3. Now choose the Share button in the upper right corner of Photos app on the Mac, it looks like a little box with an arrow flying out of the top



4. Choose the sharing option you wish to use to share the photo with: iCloud, AirDrop, Twitter, Messages, Facebook, Flickr, Notes, or any of the other options*



5. At the sharing screen, fill in the recipient if sending the picture directly, or include some details if you’re posting it to social media, then click on Send



6. Repeat with other pictures if desired

Sharing photos directly from the Photos application is quick and easy this way.

If you want to have a little fun with your pictures, you can doodle and draw on photos before sharing them too.

It’s worth noting that if you’re sharing images with GPS metadata, that geolocation information will be shared as well unless you remove location data from the image within Photos beforehand.

How to Share Multiple Pictures from Photos on Mac

Want to share a collection of multiple photos? Here’s how you can do that:

1. From the Photos app in Mac OS, select multiple images by either dragging the cursor to select them or by clicking on each picture to share while holding the Command key to select multiple pictures
2. When satisfied with your selection of multiple images, click on the Share button in the upper right corner
3. Choose the preferred sharing method* to share the selected images from Photos app

However you choose the share the images, be aware that if you’re sharing many pictures it can take a while to send them to the recipient just based on the photo and video file size, as well as the speed of your internet connection.

Note that if you choose iCloud Photo Stream then you can create a new photo stream of multiple images, which offers a simple way to share multiple images with various users in a private collection that only recipients of the shared photo stream can view.

* You can enable or disable sharing options from the Sharing menu by choosing the ‘More’ option and adjusting your settings in Mac OS System Preferences.

This is obviously aiming to share images and videos directly from within the Photos app using the built-in Sharing features in Mac OS, but if you’re a more advanced user and prefer hands-on approach you might want to
directly access the photos files in their file system location instead.

Do you have any helpful photo sharing tips for Mac? Let us know in the comments.