
Photos Preview - antr
https://www.apple.com/osx/photos-preview/
======
kohanz
I'm wondering how alone (or not) I am in being uncomfortable with cloud
storage for my (mostly family) photos. It would be the most convenient
solution in terms of storage and redundancy, but the idea of them possibly
being compromised and also somewhat out of my control doesn't sit well with
me. It feels slightly hypocritical, since I do share the odd photo on
Facebook, but the idea of having _every_ photo and video "out there" is a bit
daunting.

Currently I have a RAID 1 NAS at home (also backed up to external drive
occasionally), which I use to offload photos from our various devices. I can
access these pictures when at home from any device, but of course not outside
of the WIFI. So if I want to take older pictures on my device to share with
others, I need to download them at home in advance - that's the weakness of
this setup.

Am I living in the stone age?

~~~
junto
No, you are not alone. I too would live to find a solution so that I can share
photos and updates with my family and friends and still own the data.

My ideal setup would be the photos encrypted at rest in Amazon S3 and a simple
Google+ style photos masonry and albums app (Wordpress style install) that are
locked down. Files can be shared on Facebook and other social networks but
only as iframed embeds a bit like Wickr
[https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2015/01/30/facebook-to-
fill...](https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2015/01/30/facebook-to-fill-with-
more-kittens-in-wickrs-message-hiding-scheme/)

All my data. I control it. I can share it. Code open source. Openphoto that
became TroveBox that then failed and open sourced it's code is probably the
closest to what I want, except it is missing the Wickr style sharing and the
encrypted at rest parts.

~~~
madeofpalk
> My ideal setup would be the photos encrypted at rest in Amazon S3

Aren't your photos still in the 'cloud'? What's the difference between Amazon
S3 and Apple's servers?

~~~
junto
They would be encrypted. The point is privacy. Icloud gives you none.

In 10 years time the NSA are going to be sucking up every single photo and
email and Facebook post they can, storing it for posterity in Utah, analysing
every single one, facial recognition and categorisation automatically.

They can have mine encrypted.

~~~
towelrod
In 10 years time, the NSA will be able to decrypt anything that is encrypted
with 2015 encryption. And that's assuming they can't decrypt it now.

Privacy is important, but let's be honest, you basically can't hide from the
NSA.

~~~
veidr
That is probably not true -- there are a lot of things that we encrypted in
2005 that they still probably cannot decrypt today.

More to the point, the NSA definitely can't decrypt _everything_ that was
encrypted a decade ago. They may be able to decrypt certain things that have
somehow caught their interest.

Generally, it still makes sense for all of us to encrypt by default. But OTOH
a central feature of these photo services is 'easily share pics with anybody
you want', so obviously they need the plaintext data to do that.

I agree with junto that I would like encryption options, but I use these
services anyhow because my photos just really aren't as interesting as when I
was young -- mainly 100s of nearly-identical shots of babies drooling.

In one sense, the NSA can have the photos of my toddler; who gives a shit.

OTOH, though, it will suck when the shitty face recognition algorithms they
are datamining with in 5 years generate a partial match between my son eating
a rag and Jihadi John, and the feds come kick in the door to my house in the
middle of the night and shoot my dog before anybody realizes what's
happening... so yeah, I would just rather have it all encrypted by default.

------
brianwillis
I'm really pleased to see Apple getting away from the "events" concept that
iPhoto introduced. It was a good idea in theory - all your photos would be
automatically grouped into albums based on the date they were taken - but in
practice requiring that every photo in your library belong to exactly one
event meant that you had a bunch of awkward single-photo events. Photostream
ended up making this worse with special photostream-only events that
completely broke the model of how photos should be organised.

~~~
Wingman4l7
Wouldn't this also have been super annoying for events that went past midnight
and spilled over into the next day?

~~~
fletom
IIRC events were created based on some heuristic of the photos' geolocaiton
data and time taken. So if you do a 3 day trip outside of your city that
becomes one event on import. It was also super easy to merge two events into
one. I thought it worked pretty well in general.

------
kingnight
I think the big win for Photos.app / iCloud Photo Library is the fact that 3rd
party app 'extensions' are able to provide exponential editing capabilities
directly to the users main library.

I anticipate Photos.app on Mac gaining 'Extensions' a la iOS Extensions in the
next WWDC revision/OS X release.

~~~
eridius
OS X already has support for Extensions. Check System Preferences. The
relevant category here is "Actions". The system already provides a "Markup"
action that provides Preview.app's markup capabilities to other apps that
embed images. On my system right now, Pixelmator also exposes one action
called "Repair Tool".

You can try this out by creating a new TextEdit document and dragging an image
in there. In the upper-right corner of the image there's a dropdown button
that shows you the available actions you can take.

I certainly hope Photos.app supports Extensions. It would be a pretty obvious
oversight not to do this.

~~~
kingnight
Ah right, I forgot about the 'actions'.

As of right now (10.0.3 beta), Photos.app does not have any available access
points to "Actions", etc. Hopefully soon!

~~~
eridius
Please file a radar! I hope it's on their roadmap, but if not, better to ask
for it now than wait until after the app is released.

[http://bugreport.apple.com](http://bugreport.apple.com)

------
distantsounds
As a photographer, 5GB isn't enough for storing high-res photos. It's nice to
keep them off your iDevice, but relying on iCloud to keep them is silly.

Amazon, on the other hand, allows for unlimited cloud photo storage solely by
being a Prime customer. All my 24MP RAW photos get stored there safely, along
with having my own local storage for backup.

~~~
bobbles
So youll pay amazon for the storage but not Apple? Being a prime customer
doesn't mean its 'free'

~~~
Karunamon
Huh? That's pretty much exactly what it means.

~~~
supercoder
If you receive a service in exchange for payment , then no it's not free.

~~~
Veratyr
I think his point is that when he made the payment, that service did not
exist. His payment was for other services (such as unlimited 2 day delivery).

Now, without exchanging any further currency or otherwise paying, he receives
another service.

I'd agree that that constitutes free.

~~~
wodenokoto
But if anybody else wants "free" photo storage they have to pay. So saying
that Apple is out of their mind charging money for something that everybody
except me have to pay for is completely pointless argument, since it doesn't
relate to anybody but the lucky once who got it for free.

~~~
Karunamon
If there wasn't a commensurate increase in price, then yes it is _free_. If
you are receiving service X for a certain amount of cash each month, and then
suddenly begin to receive service Y without paying more, service Y is free.

You guys sure love to argue over semantics...

~~~
supercoder
No, the test is - If you cease paying money, do you still receive the service
?

Because there was no price increase doesn't mean it's free, it just means that
the rest of what you're receiving is now cheaper.

------
apunic
Lock-in.

A huge photo collection is the best lock-in for an OS. So to have a top-notch
app here is a smart move from Apple.

I have like 70GB of photos in iPhoto and somehow this stops me from fully
migrating to another OS. Just the thought of moving this 70GB to another file
system, OS and photo program let me stick to OSX forever. And photos
especially the family ones are maybe the most important 'personal' data of a
user.

Besides, iPhoto is not bad but the many format changes in the past were a bit
tiring.

In general I prefer Dropbox as a cloud file storage--they have the best
clients of all OSes and security features like no other (remote wipe), now I
just need a cross platform photo database which is separated from my cloud
storage provider.

~~~
ryanmarsh
Lock-in, as in a lock I can't unlock? As in I can't get my photos out if I
want? It's only lock-in if you want to leave and you can't.

I'll be as locked into this as I'm locked into my favorite scotch. I can
switch, but why?

I really don't get the lock-in argument. I like Apple's stuff, all of it. It
works really well for me. I'm the happiest I've ever been with my computer
environment. If Apple starts to suck I'll find something else, as will many
other people and some enterprising fellow will see that and create something
great. Better yet maybe Dropbox will up their game to compete with Apple on
photo storage. Rising tide etc etc.

~~~
Someone
With iPhoto, you can easily move your photos elsewhere, but moving the
metadata with it (what photo is in what album, recognized faces, etc) is
another thing.

I call that a form of lock-in.

~~~
prawn
It creates/enables inertia rather than locks you in, I think that's what
they're saying.

~~~
ryanmarsh
Inertia a.k.a. reasons for people to like and therefore stick with your
product. How dare they.

~~~
prawn
No, it's clearly different to that, and to pure lock in. (And I wasn't
offering judgement either way, just trying to help explain the other comment.)

------
bluthru
I wonder what percentage of users will have to buy more iCloud storage for
this. Charging users for more than 5gigs of storage in 2015 seems pretty
miserly, especially if someone has multiple Apple devices.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "Charging users for more than 5gigs of storage in 2015 seems pretty
miserly"

That's one way to look at it. But they need to make money somehow and I'd
prefer this to advertising or selling my data or trying to convince me to make
my life publicly accessible online.

~~~
guelo
Or including it as part of the iPhone's obscene 50%+ profit margins. That's
what Google does with unlimited free auto-backup to Google Plus, and they
don't even make money on most of the Android phones sold!

Apple doesn't need this money, just like they don't need the ugly user
experience when an iPhone's account gets disconnected from its credit card.

But Apple's culture of nickel and diming for everything has to do with
training users to pull out their credit cards. The more often a user hits Pay
the easier it is to do it the next time it comes up. As long as the user keeps
pulling out the credit card the experience is smooth and makes the user feel
like they are part of an elite higher class.

In other words, it's deliberate consumer brainwashing.

~~~
tdkl
> unlimited free auto-backup

For pictures below 2048x2048.

Also I'd rather pay for storage then expose my data to web app automated
algorithms and lack of local editing software with two way sync.

~~~
guelo
Android does include local editing with 2 way sync.

------
tunesmith
They mention it for videos also - I hope their recommendations on how to
handle videos become clearer. I used to pull my videos into iPhoto, but it
felt disorganized to have them littered among my photos, and it felt clunky to
pull them into iMovie. Later I changed to importing them directly into iMovie,
but then iMovie had one of the worst bugs I've ever experienced on Desktop
software, where over a period of months the source video of some important
footage (me performing at a club) just completely disappeared, leaving only
the thumbnails and audio. By the time I discovered it (reviewing year's
highlights), it was gone from my time machine history as well (due to Time
Machine deciding to corrupt itself and start over every eight months or so).
So now I import video into Final Cut hooked up to a desktop Drobo which backs
up to CrashPlan.

------
tashoecraft
Photos does look great, but Apple decided to completely ignore iPhoto while
making this. iPhoto has so many bugs and problems and there is nothing I can
do but sit and wait for them to release Photos.

~~~
foomoo
I like the looks, too! Looks to me as if iPhoto will eventually be replaced by
Photos (though I believe I remember the announcement was that it would not?)
as it wraps most of its functionality and has a nicer look. Maybe makes sense
to have Photos (lifestyle) and Aperture (professional) as two apps with a
clear focus for each one.

I'm just missing some statement on how the performance is, especially since we
all have like several hundred GBs or even TBs worth of pictures nowadays. It's
only a preview with screenshots though...

~~~
corv
Unfortunately Aperture is also being discontinued...

~~~
acdha
To be fair, after years of being neglected it's probably better that they
admit nobody is working on Aperture.

------
jwr
After Apple suddenly (and still no longer "officially") killed Aperture, I no
longer trust them with long-term data storage. So no "Photos" for me.

I am still thinking about how to deal with the collection that I have in
Aperture.

And before you respond with "just keep the files" or "export the files and
import into Lightroom", it's no longer 1999 and it's not just about the files.
There is metadata, tags, collections, stacks, and other kinds of
organizational structure that are not easily reflected in a directory
hierarchy.

I've been bitten once, I won't be fooled again — this time I intend to develop
my own solution for keeping this data in the long term.

~~~
gr2020
Lightroom has a new importer to pull in Aperture data, including tags and all
of that...so it's not really a "export the files and import into Lightroom"
situation - it appears it should preserve your metadata.

[http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2014/10/aperture-
imp...](http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2014/10/aperture-import-
plugin-now-available.html)

~~~
sib
Unfortunately, the Aperture and Lightroom data models and workflow are
different enough that Lightroom really can't import everything that you've
done in Aperture. Quote from Lightroom page: "migrate their images and _key_
metadata"... It also doesn't support the non-destructive workflow edits that
you've applied to your (potentially) tens of thousands of images. If you
import them, all the edits become baked in.

------
jader201
This sounds good, but if it's still going to lock all of my files behind a
proprietary and obscure file structure -- and metadata library -- that totally
get borked whenever I try to have some other app access them, then it's no
better off than iPhoto.

If they managed to keep whatever file structure I have them in intact, and
still keep the metadata/library abstracted from the file structure, then I
might have more hope for it.

~~~
marssaxman
Check out [http://www.mylio.com/](http://www.mylio.com/) \- it's all about
preserving your file structure.

~~~
clarkm
Well, their website doesn't load, so they're not off to a good start.

------
calebm
I have been struggling to manage my family's photos and videos, and it has
really been a nightmare. I'm currently using flickr, but it leaves much to be
desired. This looks like exactly what I've been looking for.

~~~
dba7dba
Another fan of smugmug here.

You can't beat unlimited storage for $40/year. Granted upload is limited by
upload speed but by letting it upload overnight, that hasn't been a problem
for me. Smugmug has app on iOS/Android that work well also.

Here's how I manage family photos/videos as a Mac user:

1\. Use "Image Capture" to import photos/videos from camera/iphone/android
into Mac. Do NOT use iPhoto to import although OS X recommends it. It's the
root of all kinds of problems afaik. "Image Capture" is free tool included
with OS X. Just open "Image Capture" and insert your memory card or plug in
usb cable.

2\. Once imported, use ExifRenamer (or other alternatives) to rename files to
date/time taken. This ensures each photo/video has unique serial. With the new
names, you can easily tell when/what/where/why just by looking at filename.

3\. You can group files into year-mm-dd or any other method you like. You can
do it manually easily or use "Big Mean Folder Machine 2".

4\. Once you have grouped files into year-mm-dd, now you can import them into
iPhoto. I do this purely for easier browsing/etc.

5\. Within iPhoto, you have photos grouped into year-mm-dd.

#Now you should NOT keep ALL your photos/videos in ONE iPhoto database/folder.
You should create 1 iPhoto database/folder for just 1 year using tools like
"iPhoto Buddy' (free) or "iPhoto Library Manager" ($20). That way iPhoto data
doesn't get too big.

#I back up both the renamed files (divided into yyyy-mm-dd) AND the iPhoto
libraries to external HDs. Backing up the renamed files as simple files is
critical imo.

#Whenever iPhoto is updated by Apple and I open an iPhoto library from older
version, that iPhoto Library needs to be updated by the newer iPhoto. Not a
big deal though.

#Backup to Smugmug Now after above are done, I start uploading photos to
smugmug. I may do maybe a month at a time or something like it. With smugmug,
I can recover photos even if I lose both my Mac and external HDs. It will be
painful but possible. Obviously Amazon S3 is another option. I would just zip
up the files and encrypt them if using Amazon S3.

~~~
ValentineC
>Another fan of smugmug here. >You can't beat unlimited storage for $40/year.
Granted upload is limited by upload speed but by letting it upload overnight,
that hasn't been a problem for me. Smugmug has app on iOS/Android that work
well also.

SmugMug doesn't support RAW in its "unlimited" plan though, does it? You'll
have to purchase the SmugVault extra.

~~~
dba7dba
Unfortunately no. But I don't shoot raw so not a problem for me.

------
jws
All photos automatically stored in the cloud at full resolution.

At last! Here's hoping I never again spend a week recovering a friend or
family member's lifetime of photos from their failed hard drive.

By the way, check your backups.

------
teekert
It all looks nice but I think many people are asking: How does this compare to
Aperture? Does it deal with Raw? The word Raw is not mentioned on the page but
they do talk about multiple formats... Come on Apple! The entire Aperture
crowd is in the dark and looking for these details!

~~~
sib
I don't have details yet, but, based on this quick review, I would say that
it's much, much closer to iPhoto than to Aperture, unfortunately. I'm sure
that it handles Raw, but not all the rest of what makes Aperture useful and
unique.

------
tomcam
I would just be happy with a file-based interface that would let me know
physically where my photos are, where they're backed up to on iCloud, and
could easily be moved to another storage device.

------
uptown
Now available in the public and developer OSX Beta.

~~~
smackfu
Thanks, I was a bit confused over what had changed since it still said "coming
this spring."

------
karapu2
It's interesting that they appear to have removed the Places functionality. I
find it the fastest way to locate many photos - vacations, nights out, etc.

I guess most folks did not use that as much, and so it was removed.

------
kryptiskt
Hmmm... another thing from Apple that goes without the 'i', I sense a shift in
branding. Probably gonna be a while before they drop it on the phones, though.

~~~
jakejake
Seems to be the way they have been moving for a while on the productivity
apps. Now only iMovie and iTunes are left.

It would be pretty ballsy (even for Apple) to drop the i and call the iPhone
simply "Phone"!

------
grandalf
I recently made the decision to use Dropbox Carousel for this kind of thing.
Anyone have thoughts on whether I should stick with that or switch to photos?

~~~
untilHellbanned
As much as I love Dropbox and think Carousel looks nice, I'm finding it
difficult to justify in comparison to Google Drive+Docs combo and/or the whole
Apple ecosystem.

Dropbox has tough sledding against the level of integration that Google &
Apple offer.

Carousel isn't going to cut it. I know they bought Mailbox and I think some
startups offering nice documentation creation tools, but I'm wondering if they
CAN do enough?

People say don't worry about the bumbling incumbents, but when it comes to
files I'm not so sure. Anyone know how Dropbox is going to win?

------
joshmlewis
I like that you can optimize for storage on mobile devices keeping a smaller
file size on the phone with the ability to access the higher res if needed.

------
dba7dba
After some reading about Photos, I'm beginning to see one big reason they are
pushing this is for the ability to charge monthly fee for storing photos
online...

Why can't they incorporate 'Iphoto Library Manager' and give user the ability
to divide iphoto libraries into smaller chunks and let users easily store them
on external Hds?

------
thomasfoster96
Is this replacing iPhoto? I can't imagine iPhoto and Photos would make sense
existing alongside each other.

~~~
mxxx
It's essentially a hybrid of Aperture and iPhoto. Similar to what they did
with Final Cut Pro and iMovie. Basically they remove all the really powerful
features and replace them with an interface a 4 year old could use. It'll
probably be a win for iPhoto users who are looking to step up their photo game
a bit, but it's a bit of a kick in the teeth for Aperture users who probably
now need to look at Lightroom.

------
nvartolomei
I just hope it will be faster compared to iPhoto which is lagging on latest
rMBP 15 i7 with 2gb discrete video card.

------
veidr
NOTE: There is nothing actually _new_ available here at all, other than some
new marketing copy.

The app is still "Coming this spring" and the extremely basic and clunky beta
cloud service is the same as what has been available since last year.

~~~
mcmillion
The beta is out for developers and it's pretty nice.

~~~
veidr
You mean the Mac app? Where? I just logged into the developer site but I don't
see it anywhere.

EDIT: Ah I see, you need the beta of the next version of the whole OS.

------
balls187
I would prefer if they had layflat photobooks.

------
Chevalier
Sigh. Does Apple offer auto-awesome like G+ (and soon, OneDrive)? Do they
highlight the best photos or stitch burst shots together into a GIF? Do they
email you memories like Everpix used to? Critically for me, do they offer
deduplication?

I currently have nearly 1TB of photos thanks to reliance on iPhoto and a
decade of attempted back-ups to local storage. In reality, there's maybe 200GB
of actual photos. Thankfully, cloud storage has stemmed the proliferation of
redundant photos.

For a company supposedly focused on user experience, Apple's complete failure
with photos has been baffling. First the catastrophe of iPhoto, then arbitrary
photo streams, and now $20/month/1TB (!) for iCloud storage. What the hell.
Apple usually justifies their premium and exclusivity by offering better
products. Hands up, everyone who thinks Apple offers even remotely comparable
web services versus literally anyone else.

This just another greedy lock-in of tech-illiterate customers by offering
worse services at higher prices. Which seems pretty emblematic of the Tim Cook
era -- when Apple fully pivoted to extracting premium money from their
customers rather than offering premium products.

------
untilHellbanned
Serious question: Is there a better way than the Abercrombie/J.Crew model
approach?

~~~
lanewinfield
As someone who used to work for Apple—they source all the photos they use in
their promotional materials from photos actual employees have taken.

~~~
untilHellbanned
I guess my question was whether it might be better to use more authentic
imagery (whatever that means) and not just images of pristine young white
people doing white people things. I'm genuinely curious about the branding
here and not trying to be sensational.

~~~
prawn
Quality photos are aspirational. No one will want to see someone's poorly
composed and boring photos in promotional material.

And 'white people'? The hero couple in Utah look black and latino to me. If
anything, Apple's marketing is generally as interracial as typical office
stock photography.

------
brockers
Another Apple ad on Hacker News? I wish we have a filter for "things that only
apply to Apple users."

~~~
Fuzzwah
Come on, this is Hacker News. If you want to filter it... hack it....

And it isn't even like you've got to invent a wheel or anything, many people
have felt the same way as you and put together some way of filtering the site
and then released the source:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=hackernews+filter](https://www.google.com/search?q=hackernews+filter)

------
tomswartz07
I've been saying this for the past few OSX releases, and this seems to just
reinforce the idea:

I believe that Apple is going to unify iOS and OSX. Their UI designs are
slowly converging, and in some cases, they're combining apps across both
platforms.

I think we'll very soon see a single 'Apple OS' that will work on all devices;
a dream that a lot of other OS's have been seeking for a long time.

~~~
jimmcslim
There's a nugget of truth here;

'some developers are reporting signs that Apple has built this new app using
something called UXKit, which sits above the Mac’s familiar AppKit frameworks
and strongly resembles UIKit on iOS.' from
[http://sixcolors.com/post/2015/02/new-apple-photos-app-
conta...](http://sixcolors.com/post/2015/02/new-apple-photos-app-contains-
uxkit-framework/)

