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OS X 10.10.3 expected to hit today, new Photos app a winner – Associated Press

An Associated Press review of the new Photos app for the Mac suggests that OS X 10.10.3 will be available for general download later today. The first pre-release seed of the latest version of Yosemite was made available to developers and testers back in February, with the first public beta following at the beginning of March.

Apple’s new Photos app for Mac computers, available Wednesday as a free software update, makes it easy to organize and edit your pictures.

AP’s Anick Jesdanun was impressed with Photos, Apple’s replacement for iPhoto and Aperture, saying that the auto-fix features were particularly impressive … 

Jesdanun said that the Enhance button – which offers a one-step automatic fix for common issues with photos – was often all that was needed, with individual Auto buttons doing a similarly impressive job for lighting, color and other elements. For example, the auto button within Color fixed a yellow cast on an indoor shot, caused by incorrect white balance.

Levelling horizons is also now automatic: when you hit the Auto button within Cropping, Photos looks for a horizon and automatically rotates the photo to straighten it. No more sloping seas.

For those who want to gets hands-on, there are sliders for each attribute, together with easy access to advanced controls. More advanced photographers will also be pleased to see that RAW formats are supported when importing photos from other cameras, such as DSLRs and advanced compacts.

Photos stores full-resolution photos on iCloud, and a lower-resolution copy locally, freeing up space on your Mac. You will, though, need enough iCloud storage to cope with this. Check out our how-to guide on uploading your photos to iCloud in readiness.

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Comments

  1. charilaosmulder - 10 years ago

    “Photos stores full-resolution photos on iCloud, and a lower-resolution copy locally, freeing up space on your Mac.”

    So where will we ever see the full res image? I hope it always downloads fullsize shots on retina devices. (Luckily I’ve seen an option in iOS to not “optimize” for the given display)

    • the iOS option is to optimize for device storage – so compressed to save space, or full-res and ignore space limitations. i would expect the same for the mac app. so the display itself is not taken into consideration.

      you will have to decide if you want full-res (because you’re on retina) or to keep only compressed images (because you’re hdd space is limited).

    • By default full-res pictures are stored on a Mac, too.

  2. Jared (@GunningGunny) - 10 years ago

    I thought this way going to be launched near the public release of the Apple Watch alongside iOS 8.3

    • Yeah it’s bit confusing. So now we’ll have Photos app running still off beta iCloud Photo Library…?

      • Jared (@GunningGunny) - 10 years ago

        I don’t think we will see 10.10.3 today, I wouldn’t mind, but still it looks as if iOS 8.3 is still a couple weeks out.

  3. Jean Simard - 10 years ago

    I have a 1T hard drive on my MacBook Pro and upwards of 10,000 photos in my Aperture Library, I don’t want to pay extra to put them on iCloud and have only a small copy on my hard drive! That means I can only work on one original if I have access to iCloud!!

    • Mark Jenkins - 10 years ago

      I don’t think you have to switch to Photos if you don’t want to – it’s optional.

    • Clearly Photo’s isn’t for you. It really is iPhoto replacement, nowhere close to Aperture. Stay with your APerture for now or find alternative .

    • Vladimir Burmistrovich - 10 years ago

      First of all you don’t have to use the new Photos app, you can still use Aperture and it will still work as before. Second of all, even if you use the new Photos app, you don’t have to store your images in iCloud, you can work with an offline library and just keep the images as before (you can even still use the old Photo Stream and it will work if you don’t use the iCloud library).

  4. Jomar Hilario - 10 years ago

    Thanks APPLE! Now using the new PHOTOS app, I can no longer drag a photo to FACEBOOK like before in IPHOTO. And also I can no longer find where my photo is located in the FINDER.

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Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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