Photos

[Stephen Hart]

OK, why hadn't I noticed this before? After OS 10.10.3 loaded Photos it didn't delete iPhoto. It's still there in the Applications folder. And if you tell iPhoto to open the old iPhoto library to the Aperture library all your photos are there. So if Photos is supposed to supplant iPhoto why did Apple leave iPhoto? As Ricky Ricardo might say, "Apple, you've got some splannin' to do."

Apple didn't exactly say they were replacing iPhoto or Aperture, but that they would stop development of iPhoto and Aperture after Photos was released.

In most past cases, Apple's new-generation software doesn't delete the old-generation software. That goes back at least as far as iMovie HD. The new Pages and the last-generation Pages coexist.

Anyway, I think the strategy of copying selected folders of photos to Photos and then using iCloud Photo Sharing seems viable. That's not any harder than using Dropbox or jAlbum (which makes photo albums you then publish to your own server).

[Richard Serkes]

On another note, I drag-and-dropped a .JPG from my desktop to the Photos icon in the Dock and worked just like it used to. Photos opened up and imported the .JPG. Somewhere in this extensive thread is a comment about you can't do that anymore. Yes, you can.

Here's Jay's comment:

I used to be able to drag and drop photos from iPhoto onto the Photoshop icon in my dock. Doesn't appear to work with the new Photos app.

So, he wants to drag and drop from an app to a Dock icon, not from the desktop to a Dock icon.

Once again I got it wrong. My bad.

[Stephen Hart]

Once again I got it wrong. My bad.

Richard, that was definitely not a "bad." This behavior is just inconsistent and therefore confusing.

I can select text, for example, "Once again I got it wrong. My bad." and drag it directly from Safari to TextEdit (in the Dock) and that will open a new TextEdit document with "Once again I got it wrong. My bad." pasted in. This also works in Mail, but not Pages.

I can drag and drop images from Safari to Aperture and Photoshop, but not from Photos to Aperture or Photoshop. But I can drag an image from Aperture to Photoshop.

Plus, my biggest wish for OS X is to select text, watch in amazement as dragging it shows the readable text moving across the screen (this already happens), and then see it, still readable, on the desktop. Sadly, once dropped on the desktop, it looks like a dowdy old icon. Clearly Apple doesn't care about its users and is about to go under. (Or, you could believe a big investment bank, who claims Apple will be the first company to reach a 1 TRILLION DOLLAR market cap in a year.)

[Stephen Hart]

Exporting from Aperture and Importing to Photos is completely manual only, as far as I can figure out.
In Aperture, you either need to choose to export originals or need to figure out settings for exporting versions (jpeg size, etc.). You export to, for example, the Desktop.

In Photos, you import from, for example, the Desktop.
While Aperture will make a folder with the project name, for example, Photos seems to import just the images. They show up in Last Import, but not in a named folder like the Untitled you get in Aperture. I only did this once, so I don't know how importing works in general in Photos, but this looks doable to use the better iCloud photo sharing in Photos.
In Aperture, I often end up with half a dozen import projects (folders of actual photos) titled Untitled, Untitled (1), etc. That way they're easy to find and later categorize.

In Photos, you can control click an image and choose Show in Moment. That shows you the group the photo is in by time and date, but not the folder (project, event, etc.) the photo is in. The photo is also not selected in the result. So if it's one of half a dozen almost identical ones, you have no clue. (see first attachment)

If you want to look at the "moments" view, as far as I can tell, the only way is to click Photos at the upper left corner. I took that to be the name of the app.

Also, slightly confusingly for Aperture users, "projects" in Photos means books, etc., while "projects" in Aperture means folders of actual image files.

[Stephen Hart]

This looks like a pretty good Q&A on Photos, from Macworld.

http://www.macworld.com/article/2880207 ... wered.html

However, I suspect that Photos is a moving target, and features will change over the next several months.

[Richard Serkes]

Photos was designed to work on an iDevice with no mouse, a very small screen and a tiny keyboard. So why port it to Mac where you've got a mouse, a large screen and a real keyboard?

Not that anyone at Apple asked me but I would have "cleaned up" iPhoto, retained and continued to improve Aperture and made both of them work seamlessly with the iOS Photos. A Mac is a different creature from an iPad or iPhone.

[Stephen Hart]

Not that anyone at Apple asked me but I would have "cleaned up" iPhoto, retained and continued to improve Aperture and made both of them work seamlessly with the iOS Photos. A Mac is a different creature from an iPad or iPhone.

I think that three things essentially required writing an app from the ground up.

First is probably a whole new database structure. Photographers have moved toward ever huger collections of images, and that's not even mentioning pros. Scrolling images used to be mentioned for iPhoto and Aperture, and I expect both were groaning under the strain.

Second is the iCloud model of keeping whole libraries in the cloud and accessible to all devices, instantly. Actually this point also interacts with the above. You can't keep whole libraries on iDevices. There just isn't enough memory. So it's the iTunes Match model. All my music is in the cloud, and only a little is on my iPhone or iPad.

And third is having at least very good coordination between how Photos for iOS works and how Photos for Mac OS works.

[Stephen Hart]

The maker of iPhoto Library Manager has a new app for Photos:

http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/powerphotos/

At a glance, it looks like it addresses some concerns I have. For example, you can search across multiple Photos libraries, so you could, for example, have one library for syncing with iCloud and others for photos you don't want to sync.

What it can't do is merge Photos libraries. Here are some alternative strategies:

http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/powerphotos/

[Stephen Hart]

Adjusting to Apple‘s New Photo Software

Bonus tip:

A. If you accidentally press the Windows and Enter keys at the same time in Windows 8.1, you turn on the Narrator feature. You can turn off Narrator by pressing the same Windows-and-Enter key combination again.