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Photos preview

R

robgendreau

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jul 13, 2008
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The Photos application is now being released to developers, and Apple says it will be available this spring.

https://www.apple.com/osx/photos-preview/

Rather than speculate endlessly about it, can we have a thread where people confirm/deny features that Aperture/iPhoto etc users might be interested in?

I noted, eg, that re/code had a screen shot that showed an info box that had a field for keywords, and for faces. So that's in.

The Verge reported it does not do star ratings or color labels or flags (uses a heart, but they say existing star ratings can be searched for). From David Pogue's preview I gleaned that these deprecated attributes are changed into tags or keywords, hence the ability to search for them. So perhaps adding "blue" is your substitute for a color label, or "one star" or whatever.

They say projects get turned into albums, which I'm skeptical about since projects exist in Photos; maybe it's just a definition switch.

It does not do geolocation.
 
From the Yahoo Tech article:

Missing features

As noted in my companion story, moving to Photos 1.0 means giving up some familiar features, too.

From iPhoto, you’ll miss these:

•Flags

•Star ratings

•Events

•Round-trip editing in another app (like Photoshop)

•Sort album by keyword, title, rating


And these Aperture features (among others) are missing:

•Flags, star ratings, color labels

•Projects

•Merge/split libraries

•Split view

•Loupe

•Camera tethering

•Stacks

•Brushable adjustments

•Adjustment resets

•Curves

•Metadata batch adjustments

Apple will add most of these features, and more, to Photos over the years — that’s its usual routine. But at the outset, you’ll have to muddle through without them.
 
JDDavis said:
From the Yahoo Tech article:

Missing features

As noted in my companion story, moving to Photos 1.0 means giving up some familiar features, too.

From iPhoto, you’ll miss these:

•Flags

•Star ratings

•Events

•Round-trip editing in another app (like Photoshop)

•Sort album by keyword, title, rating


And these Aperture features (among others) are missing:

•Flags, star ratings, color labels

•Projects

•Merge/split libraries

•Split view

•Loupe

•Camera tethering

•Stacks

•Brushable adjustments

•Adjustment resets

•Curves

•Metadata batch adjustments

Apple will add most of these features, and more, to Photos over the years — that’s its usual routine. But at the outset, you’ll have to muddle through without them.
Click to expand...

Does it do more than one library as opposed to splitting them? as in create a whole new one, then option-open to choose which one?
 
I'm very disappointed but not entirely surprised. :( :( :(

Looks like it's time for this old dog to learn new tricks...on to Lightroom.

~ Peter
 
JDDavis said:
•Brushable adjustments
•Curves
Click to expand...

Ouch.

Any word on Effect presets? My workflow has me running through a sessions first pass pretty quick due to effect presets and brushes so with those "missing" from the start then I'm stuck on Aperture. (Which means I can't use the iCloud albums yet. And that means I can't upgrade my dual drive 2012 MBP15 since I will still need onboard storage).

JDDavis said:
Apple will add most of these features, and more, to Photos over the years — that’s its usual routine. But at the outset, you’ll have to muddle through without them.
Click to expand...
Is that really their usual routine? Unlike FCPX which was still aimed at Pros, Photos seems to be aiming directly away from Pros so how much effort are they really going to put into adding the "missing features" that will only be used by pros and enthusiasts?

I really really dont want to switch to Lightroom so I'm going to try to figure out a workflow that fits for as long as I can. But I have a feeling that a year from now I'm going to still be waiting.
 
I'll just say that I'm glad I switched from Aperture to Lightroom 8 months ago.
 
seadragon said:
I'll just say that I'm glad I switched from Aperture to Lightroom 8 months ago.
Click to expand...

Has been a couple of years for me...

Photos is clearly a soccer moms app. :eek: There is no consideration at all for the pro and prosumer users. Thanks but no thanks :apple: :rolleyes:

:apple: should have let the Pixelmator boys run with Aperture. It and pixelmator would have been a nice prosumer alternative to LR & PS

PS. But Photos will probably be well received by the average iPhone picture taker...
 
Last edited:
I'm not surprised with the changes. Apple is famous for removing features. I'm betting they will have the color coding because you see that feature within other apps and including Finder.
 
Have to keep in mind that it's marketed towards the general population of users, extending it into an advanced program relative to Lightroom would confuse and turn off a lot of consumers.

As a photography enthusiast myself i've migrated over to LR, but I left no hard feelings towards iPhoto.

A prime example would be my mother, she has been a loyal and avid apple user for years on end. She knows her way around the softwares structure like a pro. She takes photos with her iPhone constantly and has them synced to all her devices. It's simple, effective, and to the point. Put her in a program like Lightroom and she is going to be taken outside the comfort zone. I think that is how a large percentage of Apples fan base is, and I believe they are trying to keep the program on that level while still being innovative while remaining simplistic and clean.

It has it's place as a simplistic organizational tool for most.

Perhaps having (2) Photos programs with one targeted towards the more advanced crowd would be an approach to consider on Apple's end. This way you can delete the one you do not want to utilize right off your dock. That or an extension you can purchase in the app store that would enlarge the program for those who choose to do so.
 
Last edited:
close2reality said:
Have to keep in mind that it's marketed towards the general population of users, extending it into an advanced program relative to Lightroom would confuse and turn off a lot of consumers.

As a photography enthusiast myself i've migrated over to LR, but I left no hard feelings towards iPhoto.

It has it's place as a simplistic organizational tool for most.
Click to expand...

I disagree. The reason why an average Mac user aren't running Aperture because its difficult, they use iPhote because its free. I know a few "average users" who use aperture as a "simplistic organization tool" and don't even touch the "pro" tools in it.

I'm not sure who started this way of thinking, but Apple apps/programs can have "advanced" tools that new users dont have to even know exist. If there is a consumer level and pro level software choice available (iMovie/FCPX) then I'm fine with the low end version missing features. But if you're killing the pro version then why abandon a big slab of your market?
 
KittyKatta said:
I disagree. The reason why an average Mac user aren't running Aperture because its difficult, they use iPhote because its free. I know a few "average users" who use aperture as a "simplistic organization tool" and don't even touch the "pro" tools in it.

I'm not sure who started this way of thinking, but Apple apps/programs can have "advanced" tools that new users dont have to even know exist. If there is a consumer level and pro level software choice available (iMovie/FCPX) then I'm fine with the low end version missing features. But if you're killing the pro version then why abandon a big slab of your market?
Click to expand...

Perhaps with LR and PS dominating the editing market Apple feels it is not an avenue they want to approach, for now (Arpeture did not seem to dip it's toes in well.). Sticking to nursing and making improvements to their cloud based system which caught a lot of criticism may be their focus.

Just stating theories, I could be way off. My outlook is that they want to keep it based as an organizational tool.
 
I've been messing with it for a few hours. I think it will work well into my style. I am a prosumer I suppose. I love the browsing functionality of the new photos app, as well as the awesome iCloud integration. Easy sync to all my devices is great. I will still use Lightroom for editing and RAW cataloging, but move all JPEG files over to Photos. I think, for my uses, it will give me the best of both worlds. I will keep the power of Lightroom, and have the great Cloud capabilities of Photos. I never had a super complicated origination structure in Lightroom. Just folders really. So it lends itself fine to moving to Photos.
 
I'm totally disappointed. I should have known better though.

Strangely, Apple has iMovie and FCP for video, Garage Band and Logic for audio, and only Photos now for photography. It's not even consistent with their other consumer/pro apps. :rolleyes:
 
JDDavis said:
From the Yahoo Tech article:
[LONG LIST OF USEFUL FEATURES]....
Apple will add most of these features, and more, to Photos over the years — that’s its usual routine. But at the outset, you’ll have to muddle through without them.
Click to expand...

Wow, start back with a product that seems as feature-rich as iPhoto 1.0 (in 2002) and have to wait a few years for features to be added back on... now that great think different Apple!

----------
HantaYo said:
Another ex-Aperture user glad he placed no faith in Apple or the Photo app and moved on to Lightroom and Photoshop.
Click to expand...

Yep, Ive been prepping for a move to LR. This has been like watching a bad horror movie... you know what's coming but don't want to believe it will be as cheesey as you know it will be. Apple has really screwed the pooch on this one... I wonder if they'll have the decency to eventually pull a "Windows 10" on this decision, and do the right thing. The point has been made here and well, that if Photos is the replacement for iPhoto (granted not a good replacement yet for it), that's one thing, but that Apple really want to push all serious photographers out of the nest?

Damned flaws in LR5... wish they had released LR6 by now, not keen to move to CC, but at the same time purchasing LR5 in it's last days seems like a loosing proposition. My 30 day trial of LR expires in a couple of days... what to do, what to do.
 
JDDavis said:
And these Aperture features (among others) are missing:

•Flags, star ratings, color labels
•Projects
•Merge/split libraries
•Split view
•Loupe
•Camera tethering
•Stacks
•Brushable adjustments
•Adjustment resets
•Curves
•Metadata batch adjustments

Apple will add most of these features, and more, to Photos over the years — that’s its usual routine. But at the outset, you’ll have to muddle through without them.
Click to expand...

The news thread about this stuff has mostly positive feedback. I haven't tried it yet but I think i will.

If it does happen to not have these features listed above, then I'm extremely disappointed but not surprised.

Photos is a consumer based app that is catering to the Facebook crowd. A lot of the features we had in Aperture and have in LR, are not needed for those folks.

Still, it looks like I made the right decision to transition over to LR when I had the time to do that.
 
I started my digital photographic journey with just folders in finder and Photoshop. I never assimilated into the Adobe universe and honestly Photoshop is way overpowered for my needs. iPhotos came along and I thought this was great step forward in managing this ever-growing library of images but it didn't offer enough editing ability natively. I hated manually managing content and opening, closing, saving, copying, etc in order to catalog and process my images.

Along came Aperture and with all it's flaws it finally provided the solution I was looking for. A single tool to manage and edit my images. Once extensions and plugins became available that offered alternatives to Aperture's adjustment choices it became darn near perfect for me. I'm disappointed to get so close to the prize and see it possibly slip away.

I'm not a "power organizer". I organize by project and I don't use tags or keywords, flags, stars and other things very much. My organization needs are pretty simple. As long as I'm allowed to choose where it ends up and it's easy to find, I'm pretty good. Photos may meet this requirement. I like some of the things I'm seeing and I want simple, non destructive, non-duplicative organization. I'm not jumping into something new anytime soon and I'll wait and see (we have time). I'd be willing to give Photos a shot, especially if we get signals of the ability to roundtrip to 3rd party plugins.

If I could talk to Apple that's what I'd ask for. Build Photos with the major portion of the market share in mind. Offer brilliant management capabilities and simple (but effective) editing tools, and all the social media integration you can think of....but offer a doorway for prosumers, enthusiasts, pros, whatever you want to call them to expand editing capabilities with extensions and 3rd party plugins. Photos could really be the best compromise of both ends of the spectrum if they really wanted it to be.
 
colorspace said:
Wow, start back with a product that seems as feature-rich as iPhoto 1.0 (in 2002) and have to wait a few years for features to be added back on... now that great think different Apple!

----------



Yep, Ive been prepping for a move to LR. This has been like watching a bad horror movie... you know what's coming but don't want to believe it will be as cheesey as you know it will be. Apple has really screwed the pooch on this one... I wonder if they'll have the decency to eventually pull a "Windows 10" on this decision, and do the right thing. The point has been made here and well, that if Photos is the replacement for iPhoto (granted not a good replacement yet for it), that's one thing, but that Apple really want to push all serious photographers out of the nest?

Damned flaws in LR5... wish they had released LR6 by now, not keen to move to CC, but at the same time purchasing LR5 in it's last days seems like a loosing proposition. My 30 day trial of LR expires in a couple of days... what to do, what to do.
Click to expand...

I agree with this. LR5 is mostly great but definitely not perfect. I am going to hugely miss OS level DAM integration.

The good news is LR6 is coming soon hopefully with some performance improvements. Adobe is actually already talking about LR6, which is a nice change from how Appple handles things.
 
Damned flaws in LR5... wish they had released LR6 by now, not keen to move to CC, but at the same time purchasing LR5 in it's last days seems like a loosing proposition. My 30 day trial of LR expires in a couple of days... what to do, what to do.
Click to expand...

It's not like Aperture just broke. Just wait until LR6 comes out.
 
Wait for LR 6 to launch indeed....and hopefully with content aware healing/cloning.


Time to remove Aperture from my machine.
 
JDDavis said:
From iPhoto, you’ll miss these:
•Flags
•Star ratings
•Events
•Round-trip editing in another app (like Photoshop)
•Sort album by keyword, title, rating
Click to expand...

I never used Aperture, but I've used (and pushed the envelope of) iPhoto since it first came out. (Yes, I had multiple instances of "the new iPhoto can handle up to x pictures in its library!" where I had more than that in the PREVIOUS version.)

Flags - not a huge deal.
Events - basically replaced with "Collections" and "Moments".
Round-trip editing - EXTREMELY annoying - I use Pixelmator for more advanced touch-up in iPhoto, it's my default "Edit" option. But it sounds like most of the options (color/exposure/etc controls, mostly,) will be available directly, so I'll see if it's good enough.
Sort by... - Not a big deal, I'm not sure I ever used it!
Geotagging - I guess this means I'll have to finish geotagging my older photos in iPhoto before moving over. Luckily, the digital still camera I got a couple months ago has GPS.
 
looks to me that photos will use app plug ins like on iPhone, i.e. when you goto edit a photo on iPhone you can also open another app makers app and edit in that and then come back to photos. I'll wager this is where apple is heading with photos on mac by making a software that is the same across all devices.
 
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