It feels like iPhoto has been around forever, providing Mac users with an intuitive, powerful way of storing snaps. In fact, it has been just twelve glorious years since it arrived on Mac, but its time is finally up. Last week, Apple released a Developer Preview of the new Photos app for OS X, which will eventually replace iPhoto.
The new arrival has very little of its predecessor about it. Whereas iPhoto and the already-retired Aperture both struggle with sluggishness, Photos is speedy and visually clean. Just like the app of the same name on iOS, your photos are arranged into a timeline, with grids of thumbnails in each event. You can hover over each tiny image to see a larger preview, and zoom in and out of this view using your trackpad or multi-touch mouse. More smart sorting is on offer, with slow-mos and panoramas segregated, and albums have a nice new look to them. ICloud integration is also baked into the new interface, with your Photo Stream accessible at all times.
One other major change is on the editing front. Clearly, Photos is the every-man app, with the current version showing no signs of replacing Aperture’s professional features. However, there are actually more adjustments available than in the current version of iPhoto, including film-like filters. Apple has also introduced an interesting array of one-slider enhancements — another feature aimed at folks who don’t want to dig into manual adjustments.
With this early impression, Photos seems to be shaping up as the lightweight library iPhoto should have been these past few years. There’s still time for it to improve, too — today’s release was seeded to developers, while a public beta is not far away, with the finished apps scheduled to be pushed to Macs sometime this spring.
Source: The Verge
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