Mikey Campbell
Less than a week after Apple announced plans to ditch both its pro-level Aperture and consumer-minded iPhoto photography tools for OS X, a report on Tuesday offers additional details on the upcoming replacement app, Photos for OS X.
Last Friday, Apple revealed it has ceased development of Aperture and iPhoto in favor of "Photos for OS X," which is set to debut in 2015 as an accompaniment to the next-generation OS X 10.10 Yosemite operating system.
At the time, little was known about Photos aside from a brief onstage mention at WWDC and a screenshot that shows a user interface and toolset befitting of a "prosumer" title.
On Tuesday, Apple revealed a bit more background on the upcoming app, telling Ars Technica that Aperture-level features will be built into the title at launch, including image search, editing, effects and third-party extensibility, or plugins.
As seen in the above screenshot provided by Apple, Photos for OS X will be an in-between product, blurring the line between consumer and professional-grade image editing and management software. For example, while image adjustments like saturation, temperature and contrast exist in iPhoto, the upcoming Photos app appears to have a higher level of control ala Aperture.
The most enticing promise, however, is third-party extensibility, which could potentially bring advanced customization options that users can apply to tailor Photos to their specific needs. If developers take to Apple's software, the app may one day offer an image editing framework robust and powerful enough to rival true pro-level tools. That being said, it looks as though out-of-the-box functionality will be somewhere between iPhoto and Aperture, as Apple alluded to in its previous statement.
As for current Aperture users, Apple said it will roll out a final update to bring compatibility with OS X Yosemite, but there are no plans to continue software development beyond that point. To ease the transition, the company is working on a solution to streamline image transfers from Aperture to Photos for OS X, which will likely to built into the forthcoming title.
Interestingly, Apple also mentioned it is concurrently working on a transitionary workflow from Aperture to Adobe's Lightroom, suggesting Photos may not fit the needs of photography professionals.
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I'm still confused about the "photo libraries in the cloud" idea. Will I still have my own physical storage of them, or are they asking me to go all cloud
Here’s what I want from iCloud:
Document on my Mac Pro. Document on my MacBook Pro. Document on my iPad.
It’s the same document. Three files, three locations. Not stored in the cloud.
When I make a change on one, the change is made on the other two.
New document created on my Mac Pro.
That new document is created automatically on my MacBook Pro and my iPad.
Identical folder trees on each, within my local account. Meaning that if I create a new folder in Documents, name it something, and drag existing files there from elsewhere, I want that all to happen on my other devices at the same time.
No storage. Screw keeping MY content in someone else’s hands. iCloud as a conduit for syncing local content across all my devices. But I am still in possession of the files.
Unfortunately, iCloud seems to be trending toward Steve’s reality (at NeXT)/dream (for everyone) of “dumb terminal/server stores account/login anywhere and see your things”.
[quote name="AppleInsider" url="/t/181089/apples-photos-for-os-x-to-come-with-pro-level-image-search-editing-plugins-more#post_2558544"]At the time, little was known about Photos aside from a brief onstage mention at WWDC and a screenshot that shows a user interface and toolset befitting of a "prosumer" title.[/quote] [quote name="AppleInsider" url="/t/181089/apples-photos-for-os-x-to-come-with-pro-level-image-search-editing-plugins-more#post_2558544"]. . . have a higher level of control ala Aperture.[/quote] befitting of. ala. too bad there's no-one around to proofread your writing. but, as mikey campbell says, "I can't."
An extensible ecosystem tied to a managed, curated core has always been key.
I'm still confused about the "photo libraries in the cloud" idea. Will I still have my own physical storage of them, or are they asking me to go all cloud
Very likely it will be like My Photo Stream/Shared Photo Streams now.
You can have none/some/all pix in the cloud and use/edit them in one place/everywhere.
It's pretty unrealistic to think that Apple will make it mandatory that all photos will be in iCloud only.