Image Library Software Free Mac App#

Image Library Software Free Mac App

ThatвЂ™s because Apple says the two photo products are closely вЂњintertwined.вЂќAlas, my positive feelings about Photos on the Mac didnвЂ™t extend to iCloud Photo Library. ItвЂ™s faster, easier to use and has a more modern feel.And although the new Photos software can be used without the cloud service, IвЂ™ve been testing that, too, roping an iPhone and two iPads into the process. ItвЂ™s essentially a Mac app that catches up to the superior look and feel of the Photos apps on the iPhone and iPad, but with greater power.At the same time, Apple has introduced an optional service, called iCloud Photo Library, which stores all your photos in the cloud and syncs them among all your Apple devices.Both have been in beta, or test releases, but became available to everyone last week as part of Mac OS X Yosemite 10.10.3.IвЂ™ve been testing the new Photos app on two different Macs, and I consider it a big improvement over iPhoto. ItвЂ™s much faster, less cluttered and has more editing options, yet still makes them simple to use. It was often slow to scroll through thousands of pictures, and its minimal editing tools seemed increasingly inadequate.Now, at last, Apple has replaced iPhoto with a new, free Mac app called simply Photos.

Albums also has a new feature: It automatically creates special albums for things like slow-motion or time-lapse videos you may have taken with your iPhone.But most people will spend their time in the Photos section of the app, which is divided into the same three views you see on your iPhone or iPad. These are similar to the icons across the bottom of the screen in the iPhone and iPad Photos app.The exception is the Projects button, which brings up things like paper books and cards, as well as slideshows. The new Photos sweeps that all away, while retaining major features.The main screen of Photos has a toolbar with just four big buttons: Photos, Shared, Albums and Projects. In my search tests вЂ” вЂњSteve Jobs,вЂќ вЂњBeijingвЂќ and вЂњweddingвЂќ вЂ” I was quickly able to narrow things down by date, name, location and more.As for clutter: While iPhoto started out as a simple program 13 years ago, over time it acquired so many options and controls that it became complex. And search is more sophisticated. The new Photos app imported my existing iPhoto libraries quickly and accurately (which is different from syncing them to the cloud).Scrolling вЂ” even through 18,000 images вЂ” is fast and fluid.

The last is Years, which is just what it sounds like.These are all meant to make it easier to find photos in large libraries. It might, for instance, contain the entire vacation. The next, called Collections, is broader.

And, for me, it didnвЂ™t, until Apple fixed it, after I brought my problem to the companyвЂ™s attention while reporting this review.At first, my MacBook Air uploaded pictures to the cloud slowly but steadily. Storage space for your photos is shared with storage space for other iCloud services like Mail, backups and documents.But the cloud libraryвЂ™s advantages only matter if it works. Apple gives you five gigabytes of iCloud storage free, but charges from 99 cents a month for 20GB, up to $20 a month for one terabyte. The new Mac Photos app now looks more like the iPhone and iPad apps. For instance, on my iPhone, I cropped a photo of a watch band and applied a black-and-white filter to it, and the altered image promptly showed up on my Mac.

And even when syncing was working, it was fairly slow, so my devices still arenвЂ™t all in sync.But one of my Re/code colleagues has also switched on iCloud Photo Library, and her transition was smooth. After investigating, Apple performed a workaround to resume the syncing.IвЂ™m not sure exactly what to blame, but I doubt an average consumer who wasnвЂ™t writing a review would have been able to quickly resolve such a problem. They explained that when the new syncing service encountered the many duplicates, it stopped syncing. It turns out I had run into a rare bug in which one of my photos from 2010 had somehow been duplicated on their servers hundreds of times, once uploaded.Apple guessed that it may have been due to a bug in an old version of iPhoto which corrupted my library вЂ” even though I couldnвЂ™t see the duplicates on my end. Many, many photos went missing from my mobile devices, and photo edits wouldnвЂ™t sync.Apple asked me to send them logs from my Mac for diagnostic purposes, and I did.

Image Library Software For Mac