Helpful Tips on Handling Photos on Your Smart Device

Pro tip: Make magnets and include them in birthday and holiday cards to friends and family.

3. Slideshows

Not only can you enjoy your photos on your big-screen TV instead of a small smartphone screen, you can add music, narration, transition sequences and special effects.

While smartphone apps are available that can do this, it’s easier to transfer the images to a computer and create a sentimental slideshow using websites like Adobe Creative Cloud Express (formerly Adobe Spark), which also allows short video clips, or PixTeller Slideshow Maker; or apps such as Photos, which is built into Windows 10 and Windows 11, or iMovie, included with Macs. When you’re done, you can upload it to social media sites like Facebook or YouTube or copy it to a USB drive and insert into a TV.

4. Photobooks, cards, posters

Don’t forget that the web offers places to upload your photos to create personalized gifts such as aprons, business cards, calendars, coffee mugs, hardcover albums, huge canvases, mouse pads, playing cards, stationery and T-shirts that can be sent to your door.

Popular services include Amazon Prints, Mixbook, Shutterfly and Snapfish for hardcover books. You can upload photos from a computer, phone or tablet and receive the custom creation a few days later.

5. Edits, filters and effects

Take advantage of your smartphone's built-in editing tools or have fun with apps — such as the free Snapseed, now owned by Google, or Photoleap by Lightricks — to easily adjust light and color and remove unwanted subjects. You can add filters and other special effects, too, such as making your photos look like vintage black-and-white or sepia-toned shots or ’70s Polaroids, Andy Warhol-inspired prints, impressionist paintings or stained glass windows.

Experiment away. It won’t overwrite your original photos.

This story, originally published Nov. 18, 2019, has been updated to delete outdated services

Turn an old tablet into a photo frame

Enjoying all of those memories of family, friends and pets is tough if the images are stuck on a smartphone.

Why not turn an old tablet into a digital photo frame for your kitchen counter, home office desk, family room end table — or even mounted to a wall in your hallway?

Use what you have. Most tablet operating systems, such as Android and iOS, have integrated photo gallery apps that can cycle through all your photos and videos every few seconds, minutes or hours.

You can store your memories on the phone or tablet's internal memory, or if you’re online, link to one of the many free photo services you can update on the fly.

Or add an app. For additional features, choose digital photo frame apps such as the free Fotoo app for Android tablets or LiveFrame for iOS.

Both of these apps also can pull images from social feeds, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other sources.

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