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After only the vaguest of descriptions and a single preview image, the first beta of OS X 10.10.3 has arrived, and with it comes a brand-new application from Apple. Photos is intended to be the successor to iPhoto and Aperture, but in its initial (and not yet released) first form, it can be said that it mostly borrows Aperture's looks and speed with large libraries, but not a lot else from Apple's former high-end photo manager. Fans of iPhoto, however, are likely to like this -- and there might even be a little gift for developers in Photos as well.
For iPhoto users, Photos is mostly the long-overdue update they've been dreaming of. The program is far more intelligent about large libraries, and lets you fly through thumbnails at a speed that will remind most of when iPhoto got its first big overhaul back in iLife 08. The size and resolution of user photos has increased significantly since then, but iPhoto hasn't really kept up. Once a user hit 50,000 photos or so (not at all hard to do any more), the performance of iPhoto really slowed down, making it unnecessarily difficult to do adjustments or work on print projects.
In large part iPhoto was a victim of its own success: the program made going digital and amassing a lot of photos and videos easy, particularly as cameraphones caught on, and software developers couldn't keep up with consumer demands for more features and for existing features to work better. In addition, iPhoto was poorly regarded by more serious hobbyist and pro photographers, to which Apple and Adobe both responded with expensive "pro" programs aimed at career professionals. There wasn't much middle ground.
Photos might become that middle ground in time, but right now it is pretty much just an iPhoto replacement with an editing UI borrowed from Aperture, and a sorting UI taken from the iOS version of Photos (and yes, even better than the present iPhoto "Events" default view). If you're using Photos on iOS already, you'll be immediately comfortable with most of the interface. Like on iOS, images are now organized even more by time than before -- "Moments" replaces Events, "Collections" is wholly new compared to iPhoto, and "Years" replaces all those smart albums you had to make previously.
There's a built in "loupe" feature to make it easy to visually find photos in the Collections and Years views, and Photos responds to gestures on the Mac or Magic Trackpad the way it does on an iOS device. If you wish (and it is encouraged), you can expand your iCloud Drive (for a modest fee) to accommodate the storage of some or all of your photo and video collection in Photos, making it available to you on your iOS device or in a web browser signed into to iCloud.com as well as on your Mac. Syncing works exactly as you'd expect, with the added bonus of the Mac version's editing -- which updates the version on your other devices as you go (and can still always revert back to the original).
Speaking of editing, from an iPhoto user perspective the new editing tools are a big step up. The automatic suggested crop-and-straightener feature is nothing short of fantastic. Users who like to tinker with photos manually will find much to like here as well -- a new UI for some of iPhoto's old (but still relatively powerful) tools that work much better and easier -- but still allow for customization. The Verge has produced a video that goes through a short tour of the changes you can see below.
Some things are gone, at least for now: Aperture's brushable and curve adjustments or metadata editor, for example. Stars, flags, round trip editing, events (though really Moments covers that), and the ability to sort albums by keyword or title. We were disappointed to see that being able to manually geotag photos is gone, along with any direct way (from within the app) to email photos or share them on Facebook or Flickr. We were expecting Apple to also drop the print products feature, but there it is, and much more like Aperture than iPhoto ever was (in other words, far more professional-looking themes and templates).
We were also surprised to learn that Photo Stream lives on, though Photos for Mac is more deeply integrated with the iCloud Photo Library, and works beautifully with it. Those who don't want to use it can continue with the free Photo Stream -- but we think the average person, who likely only has a photo library of 20GB to 200GB, will be willing to pay $1 to $4 a month to store and access their entire collection on any device.
Think of how much room this will free up on your iPhone or iPad (though it's worth noting that other services also offer substantive cloud storage for cheap or even free -- Prime members of Amazon get unlimited photo storage, Flickr offers 1TB at no charge, but these options are not as integrated of course). If you don't want to store anything in iCloud, or want to pick and choose between local and cloud, you can do that.
The big thing people are going to notice is the speed of Photos. This is a huge leap, comparable to the day you first worked with an SSD instead of a hard drive. Everything is butter smooth, though to be fair modern machines tend to have 8GB or more of RAM so that could also be playing a role -- but the difference is very noticeable, even with a large-ish library. There's still no built-in way to split or merge multiple libraries, but you can still have them.
If you're on iPhoto now, a lot of concern is seemingly lifted by this first beta. In most ways, Photos is a big improvement on some of iPhoto's weaker points, and it is even more well-suited to amateurs than it was before. Some of the features iPhoto had (like album sorting) may very well be returned, either in the final 1.0 edition or in future revisions of Photos. Much more exciting, at least to us, is the possibility that advanced features may be filled in by third party developers through the plug-in architecture.
Indeed, early testers have discovered that Photos is built on a new, private framework called UXKit, which is essentially a port of UIKit from iOS sitting on top of AppKit. This may mean about the same thing as if we said it featured Eartha Kitt to most readers, but what it boils down to is this: Apple appears to be working on a way to make iOS-to-OS X app conversions much easier -- and this opens up a tall can of possibilities down the road. In the meantime, we hope great Photoshop plug-in developers like Red Giant, Macphun, Athentech, and onOne can fill in some of the gaps with the ability to use their products within Photos the way.
Bottom line: if you like iPhoto or Aperture, you may want to stick with them past the formal introduction of Photos -- we bet future revisions after the debut will restore some of the missing features, like geotagging. That said, keep your eye on this program -- as a replacement for iPhoto, it is very, very strong in most areas and most iPhoto users, we think, are going to love it.
Aperture users, you've already heard this, but here it is: in the short term, stick with Aperture or jump to Lightroom (now available for $10 per month with Photoshop CC on an annual subscription). We hope, but we don't know, that developers will jump into Photos and add many of the power-features you'll want into the program through the plug-in architecture (certainly we hope Flickr and Facebook uploaders return, just for a start). If they do, by the time Aperture finally doesn't work anymore you may already be enjoying a souped-up Photos as your main organizer and editor. Adobe doesn't have much to fear today, but a year or two from now? We'll see.
One of the things I liked about iPhoto compared to all other organizers is the ability to browse all my photos at once in its library irrespective of what event they were part of. Hopefully this will remain. Also I agree they should keep "events".
Has any beta user identified if Folders are retained. I have albums organized into folders. I dod not want to rely on Apples idea of how I should organize my library. Items changes drive me nuts and make simple things like creating playlists complicated. I have a 27" screen so I can use that to sort and copy. Retaining everything within on window make me NUTS. Can a sidebar be turned on? IMHO this allows for easy access and sort to photos I want to see. I completely agree that it needed an overhaul and is why i have 100,000 pictures separated into 4 libraries. Is there a way to combine if libraries? Again seems to be making choices on looks over how the software is actually used. My desktop is a desktop and iPhone is an iPhone I do not want them to operate the same.
I won't be able to use Photos unless they keep location information. I've just spent five years updating the location information in my ten years of digital pictures so all of my 150,000 pictures appear in Places.
Insaneboy: yes, it does video as well. And RAW well, finally, though I think people who always shoot in RAW are going to tend to head to Lightroom for the better editing features.
mdenmarsh: you can create your own albums, and the albums you created in iPhoto are retained. I didn't see a way to combine libraries, though I suppose you could just import them all. Fret not, if there's no present way to merge libraries the people at Fat Cat Software will likely make one (they currently make iPhoto Library Manager, highly recommended)
GreenMnM: Photos keeps the location information. What it does not yet do is allow you to edit that information. I expect that will be added back in over time, and you can keep using iPhoto till that happens.
I use iPhoto manager now to switch back and forth between. Its a great tool. What I'm looking for is the folders and nested folders. I'm looking for. A folder contains multiple albums. For instance. Beach Trips: Cancun Album, Cabo, Bahamas. Or Nested Folders. Kids Folder: Daughter 1 Folder: Birthday Album, Softball Album. In my Sidebar Under Albums I have Many Folders Divided up by categories that make sense to me. Inside those folders are albums. I want to make sure that i can retain that organizational ability. Is this going to be part of the OS upgrade or a standalone app. I'm concerned that it is part of a system upgrade rollout.
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