Posts Tagged → photography

PowerPhotos: The Apple Photos Power Tools You’re Missing (Sponsor)

I’m happy to welcome back PowerPhotos as a MacSparky sponsor. If you spend any real time inside Apple Photos, you know what’s missing. PowerPhotos fills those gaps, and has been doing it for years.

Apple Photos was built on the idea that you have one library and you trust the algorithm. Brian Webster and the team at Fat Cat Software built PowerPhotos on the idea that you might want more control than that.

The Feature Set

  • Manage multiple Photos libraries from a single place. No more launch-and-quit dance to switch between them.
  • Find and remove duplicate photos, freeing up storage on your Mac and in iCloud Photos.
  • Merge libraries together, preserving albums, edits, and metadata.
  • Batch edit metadata on titles, captions, and keywords with fast keyboard-driven editing.
  • Run advanced exports with a level of control Apple Photos doesn’t surface anywhere in its own interface.

Each one of these is something I’ve reached for at least once over the years. The library merge is the killer feature for anyone who started with iPhoto, ended up with three or four parallel libraries, and now wants to consolidate without losing the work already in there.

Recent Updates

PowerPhotos 3.2 added new export options, including XMP support and the ability to export a full library in one shot. If you care about your metadata surviving the trip out of Apple Photos, XMP is the right answer.

PowerPhotos 3.3 brought extensive Shortcuts support. More than 30 actions covering library management, exports, finds, and tagging. You can build a shortcut that finds every photo from a trip, copies it to a separate library, and tags it on the way through. Apple Intelligence and the MCP wave will make Shortcuts support a lot more valuable, and PowerPhotos is one of the apps that’s already there.

Try It

PowerPhotos is a free download and gives you plenty without paying anything. Paying for a license adds the advanced features. Deleting duplicates, merging libraries, and unlimited copying, exporting, and metadata editing all come with the paid version.

If you already own PowerPhotos, or even the old iPhoto Library Manager, your existing key gets you 50% off the upgrade. Everyone else can use coupon code MACSPARKY26 for 20% off, for a limited time.

Check out PowerPhotos today.

Pixelmator Pro FTW

I recently realized that I’ve stopped using every photo editing app except Pixelmator Pro. It happened gradually over a couple of years, but now it’s the only tool I reach for.

I love Acorn and respect the other developers making great image editors. But Pixelmator Pro has become so ingrained in my workflow that I don’t even think about alternatives anymore. Whatever I need to do with an image, I know exactly how to do it in Pixelmator Pro.

Sometimes the best app isn’t the one with the most features. It’s the one you know so well that it disappears. Pixelmator Pro has become invisible to me in the best possible way.

Nobody Can Make Fun of Phone Cameras Anymore

I was sitting in the dark of my backyard last night, admiring the planets, as you do, when I noticed a blob of something in the tree looking down at me. My distance vision is 20/20, yet I still could not make it out. I pulled out my iPhone and used the 5x lens in dark mode. It kept the shutter open for a few seconds and returned this image.

Austin Mann’s iPhone 16 Pro Review

Austin Mann is back with a definitive review of the iPhone 16 Pro camera system. He took last year off, and I’m really glad to see him back this year. He took the new iPhone 16 Pro to Kenya, where he took more than 10,000 photos and logged over 3 terabytes of ProRes footage, all with this new camera system. His review is full of great examples and commentary.

It’s remarkable what kind of shots and videos you can get when you put this technology in the right hands. Check out Austin’s review to improve and understand your iPhone photography better.

Photomator for Mac

Last week Pixelmator released Photomator for the Mac. Photomator is the application which finds that Goldilocks position between Apple Photos and Pixelmator Pro. If you’re looking to make your photos look better, but you don’t want to get in the weeds, this is the application for you. 

I’ve always been impressed with the way Pixelmator incorporates artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge Apple technologies into their products. Photomator gives you the benefit of those technologies without the learning curve. Color adjustments. Batch editing features. Magical Repair and Clone tools. Even better, with iCloud support, whether you’re using Photomator on Mac, iPhone, or iPad, your edits will always stay in sync. 

Watch below to see just how fast and simple Photomator is. 

Shooting the Moon, AI Style

There’s an interesting story right now about the latest Galaxy S23 and the moon. A person on Reddit made a blurry picture of the moon and then took a picture of that blurry image with his Galaxy S23, which used its particular, highly trained AI, to make it a clear and beautiful picture of the moon. That resulting picture wasn’t so much the same moon the photographer saw so much as it was an AI-generated picture of what the S23 computer brain expected the moon to look like in that particular photo.

I don’t really know how to feel about that. If I took a picture of my wife, would I want the picture of that lady that I love as seen through my lens in the moment or the idealized version of her the AI generates on the phone? That’s kind of a loaded question because, with all of the computational photography going on in all smartphones (iPhone included) you never really see exactly what the lens saw anymore. To me, the tipping point is where the image capture no longer matters. It appears the S23 is at that point when you shoot the moon.

The iPhone Camera vs. Big Fancy Cameras

Tyler Stalman did a recent video comparing the iPhone to big, fancy cameras. The question comes up every few years, and every few years the percentage of people for whom big, fancy cameras still make sense gets smaller. Tyler is a professional filmmaker, so he’ll always need something more, but for the rest of us, big fancy cameras are getting harder and harder to justify.

Austin Mann on the iPhone 14 Pro

One of my favorite reviews with each new iPhone is that of Austin Mann. Austin always takes the new iPhone someplace interesting (this time, it’s Scotland) and takes some amazing pictures with the new iPhone Pro while pointing out its strengths and weaknesses. Austin’s iPhone 14 Pro camera review is now up.

This time, he spends a lot of time explaining the advantages of the 48 Megapixel sensor and where its limitations are. He also has thoughts on the three camera sensors. If you are interested in iPhone photography, don’t miss this one.