App Review: Apple’s Photos

With Apple announcing the demise of iPhoto nearly a year ago, it comes as no surprise that part of the free OS X 10.10.3 update finally introduces the new Photos app. Photos modernizes iPhoto and brings the interface and editing into the mobile era. This means that edits made on any Apple device carry over to every other device. 

Photos is also designed to replace Apple’s Aperture app, but those comfortable with Aperture will likely continue to do their editing using Aperture’s somewhat more robust editing tools. Neither iPhoto nor Aperture are removed from your computer during the Photos installation, and the images stored in those older apps remain accessible. However, neither program will see further development; their future beyond OS X 10 is highly uncertain. When you first open Photos, the app asks you what photos you want to import. Both iPhoto and Aperture options are available. After this initial import, you can import images from anywhere on your computer, or from your camera or card reader. 

Another plus: you can share a Photos image with Aperture using the “Add to Aperture” feature.

WHAT’S NEW

Although you will find hints of its predecessors in the new app, Photos sports an entirely new design and a new editing workflow. Photos divides your images into the same Moments, Collections and Years as iOS. This organization is fun and useful, but the real power is in Albums, accessible as a tab in the Photos menu bar when the sidebar is closed, and in Smart Albums. Albums are collections of photos and videos that you create and populate, while Smart Albums automatically collect images using parameters you set. 

Images with GPS metadata will display on a map. Photos © Stan Sholik

The most innovative feature in Photos is the ability to manage and synchronize all images and videos across all devices through the iCloud Photo Library. If you were dying to bring the organization of your desktop photo library to your mobile device, the wait is over. Through the iCloud Photo Library, Photos manages and updates all devices seamlessly, although, as you’ll see below, it won’t do so inexpensively.

USER FRIENDLINESS

As with all Apple apps designed for the amateur and prosumer, Photos is as user friendly as an image management and editing program could be. While the new design looks unlike either of its predecessors, it will feel completely familiar to those who have used iOS 8 and Photos for iOS in the last six months. The default Photos interface floats above the Mac desktop in familiar OS X fashion. However, I prefer to do my photo management and editing with an app that hides my desktop. Photos accommodates this, and once I set the option and sized the window, this became my new default workspace. 

With Apple’s new Photos app, you can expand the Adjust tool to show sliders to precisely adjust the image. 

With the Photos interface set to my liking, the browser presents a clean, white and light-gray color scheme, with lots of negative space, while the edit module is black with slightly lighter dark-gray tones. For new users, the Edit module presents six basic tools: Enhance, Rotate, Crop, Filters, Adjust and Retouch. The Enhance tool makes automatic adjustments and does so pretty well. The other tools have basic adjustments with visual references for beginners, with additional power available by clicking downward-facing arrows for more advanced users.

WHAT WE LIKED

Even in its first release, Photos feels like a mature program. The app delivers on Apple’s prerelease promises of a simple, fast and powerful photo manager with editing capabilities and the ability to synchronize a photo library across desktop, laptop and iOS devices. Apple Photos effortlessly imports, updates, and syncs still images and videos across devices with only minimal need for user input, although more advanced users can exercise some degree of control with albums and smart albums. The Edit module looks simple when first opened, but there are a few relatively powerful sliders available behind the simpler tools in the Adjust group for more advanced users. You can also add a histogram, levels, white balance, sharpening, noise reduction and vignetting controls by clicking Add in the Adjust title bar and selecting the adjustments you want to display.

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Photos allows you to import directly from your camera or a card reader as well as locations on your computer.

And the non-destructive image edits you make on one device automatically sync across all devices. You can start editing on your iPhone or iPad and finish editing on your Mac, or with any other combination of Apple devices, and the edits synchronize on every other device when you connect to the iCloud.

WHAT WE DIDN’T LIKE

If you accept that Photos is not a professional-level imaging app, there is very little to criticize. It doesn’t accept plug-ins, nor does it connect to any external editing application other than Aperture. The brushes found in Aperture are missing in Photos, as is the loupe, but most users probably won’t miss these. 

But I do have issues with the iCloud Photo Library. For one, all media in the default Photos System Photo Library is added to the iCloud Photo Library. If there are images in Photos that you do not want online for any reason, you must remove them from the default Photos library or your iOS device.

Which brings me to my major gripe with Photos and the iCloud Photo Library: I filled my free 5GB allocation in iCloud with imports just for this article. Additional storage is expensive relative to the cost of using Dropbox, Google or Amazon Prime. Rather than compete with these services, Apple seems content to milk its users. 

HOW IT COMPARES

While I honestly had little use for iPhoto, Photos is a different beast entirely. Professional photographers, myself included, are taking many more non-assignment photos and videos. Apple Photos enables all of us to easily manage, adjust and share these without being bogged down in a heavyweight professional image-editing program. Photos is not a replacement for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom or Adobe Bridge/Photoshop (or other powerful Mac image-editing apps such as Pixelmator or the upcoming Affinity). But with the management, synchronizing and sharing capabilities of the new app, Photos has a place in the life of Mac desktop and iOS users, and even Windows users connected to the iCloud.