Aspect ration - want 16x9 only saved, not also 4x3

The problem is, that the Camera.app is taking every phtos in the 4:3 aspect ratio. If you set the Camera to take 16:9 images, the camera will save the photo as 4:3 and crop it to 16:9. This may not be the best possible crop. The cropped version will be an additional file, that can be reverted to 4:3 , so we can change and select the best cropping rectangle for a more pleasing result. The Camera does not know, where to place the 16:9 cropping rectangle for the best composition.

You need to go in and click Preserve Settings, but make sure you were in the settings you last wanted. Then say yes to preserving them. I haven't had an issue since.

Settings > Camera > Preserve Settings > Creative Controls click to on

I see, wee are using Photos very differently. I am rarely downloading the files manually form my iPhone but are letting iCloud sync them to my mac. Related groups of files will be stacked as one photo, so I do not have to deal with the additional working copies. And only the 4:3 original file will be transferred as an original, but will be shown cropped to 16:9 in Photos. I am preferring the space saving HEIC files and are a bit disappointed that Photos does not yet support the export as HEIC.

When you are weeding out the files that you do not want, have you tried to sort them by the file type in the Finder to delete the working copies quickly?

Just a thought, joanfrommorgan hill: you may come to regret not keeping the full information recorded by your camera. I have been going through pictures I took 20 years ago, and mostly I kept cropped images on my computer-- those are the ones I've looked at all these years. But I stored the originals on CDs and DVDs and hard drives, and I've been going back through those. I've found that I sometimes want to make different decisions now that I look back.

Sometimes those "not so good" pictures have information that I now find valuable. Sometimes I find pictures that, with a little help, beat the ones I picked before. And sometimes I choose a different crop that makes a picture better. I'm glad I didn't toss the ones I that I didn't like so much at the time.

Richard.Taylor wrote:

You're right-- you never know what'll happen in 20 years. Luckily the pictures are just 1s and 0s-- they take up almost no physical space. You should see the closet full of prints and slides!

And the digital photos can be saved without decaying. My prints and slides are from 1980 already have changed the color, I have started much too late to scan my prints and and slides. Some of them are requiring a lot of effort to restore them and to recover the lost colors, remove Newton ring, dust, and scratches.

You're right-- you never know what'll happen in 20 years. Luckily the pictures are just 1s and 0s-- they take up almost no physical space. You should see the closet full of prints and slides!