Last week, Apple released an update to Yosemite that includes a new Photos app . This app is a working replacement for iPhoto, and does much better job of organizing your photos without hogging system resources. Here’s how to use it.
What’s Different from iPhoto
Before we dig into how to use Photos, it’s probably worth running through a quick checklist of what sets Photos apart from iPhoto. Both apps are photo management tools, and if you’ve used iPhoto, you’ll be pretty familiar with Photos right from the start. However, they do work pretty differently. Here are just a few important ways they differ:
iCloud Photo Library is deeply integrated with Photos, though you can still use Photos by manually syncing with your phone. That’s good, because the 5GB of free space offered by Apple probably isn’t enough for most people.
With iCloud Photo Library, all pictures are pushed immediately from your phone to your computer (and vice versa) instead of using the older Photo Stream feature (which is still available.)
You can sort by photo type, including panoramas, burst shots, timelapse, and whatever else—just like you can in iOS.
The sorting options are very similar to the iOS apps, but you can still sort by album, date, and location. You can also separate by collections, much like on iOS. Shared albums now appear in the main source list as well.
The star rating system in iPhoto has been replaced with a heart to “favorite” specific photos.
Like the iOS Photos app, the different views are separated into several levels: Years, Collections, and Moments. You can zoom in on any of those by clicking the clicking anywhere on the timeline. You can also click on a place name to look at a map view of where your photos have been geotagged.
Your photos are divided into three separate tabs on the top navigation bar: Photos, which is all the photos in your library, Shared, which is any shared Photo Streams you’re a part of, and Albums, which is any dedicated albums you’ve created. Finally, you also have a Projects tab where you can create and print photo books.
Of course, there are a few other minor differences as well. Really, what matters most is the fact Photos is much faster and more responsive than iPhoto was. It’s still not the perfect photo management tool, but at least it doesn’t bring your entire system to a screeching halt when you open it up. For the most part, if you’re already an iPhoto user, you’ll understand Photos. If not, it’s still easy to pick up.
How to Set Up Syncing in Photos
The initial set up process for Photos is simple. If you’re using iPhoto or Aperture, Photos will automatically import your photo library into Photos. If you have multiple libraries, hold down the Option key and open Photos. You’ll be asked which library you want to use. Photos uses the same master file as iPhoto or Aperture, so don’t delete your old libraries when you’re done. It should bring over all you photo details too, including any faces you’ve tagged, geolocation, dates, albums, and everything else.
From there, you’ll need to decide if you want to use iCloud Photo Library or My Photo Stream. With iCloud Photo Library, any picture you take on your iOS device is automatically uploaded to iCloud and imported into Photos.
With My Photo Stream, the most recent 1000 (or the last 30 days, whichever is greater) photos are synchronized across devices only when you connect to Wi-Fi and they’re not stored on iCloud at all.
You can also opt out of either and upload your pictures into Photos manually. Just plug in your camera and Photos will ask if you want to import them.
If you’re using Photo Stream or iCloud, you’ll need to do a little set up.
On a Mac:
Head to System Preferences > iCloud
Check the box marked iCloud Drive
Check the box marked Photos, and make sure iCloud Photo Library is turned on (or check the box for My Photo Stream)
On your iOS device:
Head to Settings > iCloud
Tap Photos, and toggle iCloud Photo Library to on (or tap My Photo Stream to sync all your devices over Wi-Fi)
Keep in mind that if you decide to use the iCloud Photo Library, you’ll likely need more storage space to keep up with those photos. Here’s what it’ll cost you:
20GB: 99¢/month
200GB: $3.99/month
500GB: $9.99/month
1TB: $19.99/month
Once all that is set up, Photos will take some time to sync everything up or import old photos. Once it does, that’s pretty much it for the photo management part.
Get to Know Photos’ New Editing Features
Besides being photo management software, Photos also has some very basic photo editing features. Most of these are slightly beefed up versions of what was already in iPhoto.
To edit a picture in Photos, just highlight it and click the Edit button. Here, you’ll get a very basic set of editing six editing options.
Enhance: This applies a set of automatic changes that are supposed to improve the photograph
Rotate: As the name suggests, this allows you to rotate the image in 90 degree increments
Crop: Crop allows you to both straighten an image, crop it out, or adjust the aspect ratio
Filters: Photos comes with eight filters you can use to apply to your images: Mono, Tonal, Fade, Chrome, Process, Transfer, and Instant
Adjust: Here you can add specific adjustments, including Light, Color, and Black & White. Click the down arrow to reveal a set of more adjustments for each of those. You can also adjust white balance, levels, noise, and more by clicking the Add button. These use sliders to control everything. Add more of the effect by sliding the adjustments to the right, and less by sliding them to the left.
Retouch: Retouch allows you to cover up blemishes or spots. It doesn’t work that well, but it’s fine if you need to cover up something small.
There’s not much there, but Photos does support third-party extensions, so hopefully we’ll see integration with software like Pixelmator at some point in the future.