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When Apple unveiled OS X 10.10 Yosemite way back in June it also briefly previewed a new Photos for OS X app that is meant to replace the aging iPhoto software, which has been a staple on Macs since 2002. An iPhoto replacement is long overdue, but Photos for Mac is so much more that just the successor to an aging photo editor. It represents the next step in the convergence of iOS and OS X.
As you’ll see the new Photos for Mac looks and acts like the Photos app on iOS. Thanks to deep iCloud integration it also seamlessly syncs and communicates with Photos on iOS as well. And Apple hasn’t stopped there with the new Photos for Mac. The company has also recently announced it is discontinuing its Aperture professional photo editing software. Thankfully, the company has decided to bring some of Aperture’s tools over to the new Photos app.
Sounds like a lot of cool stuff, huh? Lets take a look at some of the biggest features.
1) A completely new user interface
iPhoto’s interface become more unwieldy as the years go on. This is something that often happens to apps as new features are added; interfaces just become more cluttered because you need to keep adding new buttons and tools in somewhere. But with Photos for Mac the app takes its design cues from the sparse simplicity of Photos on iOS.
Clean line and lots of white space that leave room for the important things--your photos--abound. The cluttered sidebar listing all your photos, albums, events, faces, and places has been jettisoned in favor of a simpler navigation bar with only four buttons on top: Photos, Shared, Albums, and Projects.
2) It’s insanely fast
I briefly played around with the Photos for Mac beta on my friend’s three year old MacBook yesterday and I can tell you Apple has made the app insanely fast. Scrolling and navigating through massive photo libraries--I’m talking 20,000 images--seems three to four times snappier than it is in iPhoto.
Apple has achieved this by completely writing the app from scratch. There’s nothing in its code base which is built upon the old iPhoto. This is a huge boon to users who have existing Photo libraries that could number in the hundreds of thousands of pictures.
3) There’s crazy iCloud syncing going on
A big reason Apple created the new Photos for Mac is because it wanted to unify the photos experience across Mac, iPhone, and iPad. To do this Apple created the iCloud Photo Library. This allows you to take a photo on your iPhone and it will instantly appear in your Photos app on iPad, and now your Mac.
iPhoto actually offered iCloud photo sync support--but it was positively archaic compared to Photos for Mac. Not only will Photos for Mac instantly sync via iCloud with your Photos app on your iOS devices, it also syncs your albums, favorites, and edits on the fly.
Make an edit to a photo on your iPhone and that edit is automatically applied to that photo on your Mac. Mark a photo as a favorite on your iPad and that photo is instantly favorited on your Mac.
4) Photos for Mac has more powerful editing tools
For the most part Photos for Mac keeps all the simple, well-loved editing tools iPhoto had, but since Apple is folding Aperture down, it’s decided to port some of the professional app’s editing tools into Photos for Mac to give users greater editing control. Just what kind of control? Now users will be able to make more granular adjustments to their photos thanks to sliders that give you greater control over light, colors, white balance, levels, definition, and more. And not to worry, all your one-click simple editing tools are there too, including a really cool one which automatically crops your pictures so they comply better with the Rule of Thirds .
5) It’s like Instagram
iPhoto always had rudimentary--and kind of lame--filter effects. But with Photos for Mac Apple has thrown all those out and started fresh. The new app will allow you to apply Instagram-like filters including Mono, Tonal, Noir, Fade, Chrome, Process, Transfer, and Instant.
6) Better sharing
One last new feature I like is Photos for Mac’s sharing capabilities. iPhoto previously let you share your photos to Facebook and Twitter, or via Messages or Mail; but the new Photos app takes advantage of OS X 10.10 Yosemite’s sharing extensions, which means any third-party photo apps could integrate with Photos for Mac and allow you to instantly share photos between them.
How Do I Get It?
The good news is Photos for Mac will be free. The bad news it won’t be available until later this year. Apple hasn’t given an exact date, just saying it’s “Coming this Spring”. When it does ship it will come as part of the OS X 10.10.3 Yosemite upgrade. All you’ll need to do is run Software Update on your Mac and you’ll be able to grab this new cool app.
13:59, 6 Feb 2015
by michaelg via Featured Articles
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