Apple to replace iPhotos on Mac with a new 'Photos app'

The iPhotos app on Macs will be getting an upgrade as Apple has started to roll out the first pre-release seed of OS X 10.10.3 to testers and developers which has the new Photos app in it, says a report on 9to5Mac . If you’re an Apple Mac user, the iPhotos app is probably one of the things you hate the most, given how it is not at all easy to find photos in the app unless you’ve bothered to come up with album names each time you upload pictures via the app. It’s also not the easiest app to navigate when you’re searching for photos.

The new Photos app, however looks more like the photos app on iPhone and iPad (part of Apple’s efforts to bring continuity across devices) and will allow users to see their photos organised into Moments, Collections, Years. In collection you see photos bunched together according to months, while in years you can see the photos collection according to each year.

According to Yahoo’s David Pogue , “The Albums tab shows all your photo “folders,” just as in iPhoto. A single photo can appear in as many albums as you like, without using any more disk space.”

The new Photos app will also come with support for iCloud Photo library and if you switch on the option then it will let you automatically store all of your photos and videos in iCloud Photo Library in their original format and in full resolution.

It also brings a new photo editing app to the Photos app. Currently iPhotos offers very basic editing like cropping, red-eye fixing, enhance (which doesn’t let you choose the setting), straighten, etc. Now the new editing tools will allow users to fix exposure, highlights and shadows, adjust contrast, and crop straighten, etc. Also Apple is bringing Filters to the Mac Photos app.

In addition to this, when you edit a photo on your iPhone, or mark one as a Favourite, or add to an album, the changes are reflected on your iPhone, your iPad, and iCloud and if your library is synced with iCloud, these changes will reflected on your Mac as well.

This report on The Verge says that new app is much easier to navigate. The post notes, “Photos for OS X uses some other neat organizational tricks. The Albums view automatically highlights photos from your last import and your favorites, along with buckets for different kinds of images: panoramas, slo-mo videos, and time lapses, for example.”

For regular users Photos for OS X will be rolled out this spring, according to the Apple website . Apple is also giving users the option to store full resolution images on iCloud instead of taking actual space on your computer and small optimised images that take up much less storage space will instead be displayed on your mobile devices and even on your Mac.

The only problem here is that security might be a concern for some people and of course Apple’s 5GB free space is unlikely to prove enough to keep so many pictures. You’ll likely have to buy more storage space from Apple.

The option of sharing the pictures from the app is still there and you can now even AirDrop photos directly from app. Apple says users can also customise the menu and share directly to other compatible sites that offer sharing extensions.

It’s good to see that Apple is finally sprucing up what is after all an important app on the Mac system and bringing it at par with the one on iOS.