Another failure.

Another purported solution looking for a problem. Apple Watch, anyone?

Once upon a time – many years ago – iPhoto was a sweet application. Import of images was easy, addition of text always worked with no frustration and creation of customized web pages using either the built in code or aftermarket plugins was easy, fast and elegant.

Apple tried to get serious about still photo processing with Aperture but it was flawed software which never had the company’s full attention. The design was chaotic, with no logical work flow (the description ‘scatterbrained’ comes to mind), the machine demands were very high so you had to have the latest Apple hardware to make it run at half decent speeds (shock news there) and the application only worked with OS X.

The best thing I ever did with Aperture was to migrate to Lightroom which, even in its early versions, ran fast, was logical and far easier to use. Adobe has always done a great job of keeping current with the myriad of RAW formats coming to the market seemingly weekly, updates coming soon after new cameras are released. LR is now so capable that round trips to Photoshop for regular work are rare. Lightroom remains fast, compact and as useful on OS X as it is in Windows, the files readable in either. Adobe’s greatest challenge is likely in deciding where to draw the line in not cannibalizing its Photoshop cash cow any further.

I migrated to Lightroom in 2008 and frankly the signs for Aperture’s demise were already on the wall, with increasingly infrequent updates and interminable RAW delays, interspersed with constant bugs. It took many years for Aperture to die, however, the product finally being put out of its misery last year, but not before Apple cynically offered cheap/free versions for reasons I cannot fathom. Those who delayed conversion to the superior Adobe application(s) merely increased their conversion problem, which they are struggling with right now. Loyalty to software in a fast changing world is futile.

Now Apple has added Photos to OS 10.10.3 (Yosemite) and a like app to iOS. I downloaded OS 10.10.3 – mostly to see what else it would break – and toyed some with Photos. (If you use Trim Enabler for your SSD management and a ‘made for Apple’ Nvidia GTX680 GPU in your Mac Pro as I do, be sure to disable Trim Enabler as the chances are you will lose all video when moving to 10.10.3).

I wish I had not wasted my time with Photos. I use iPhoto for quick snaps which have no place in my ‘serious’ Lightroom catalog and generate occasional web pages for our family albums. The conversion process from the iPhoto catalog was seamless, and the iPhoto catalog remains accessible. Thank goodness.

Much of the sorting capabilities of iPhotos remains – Photos, Albums, Projects – to the point where you really wonder what has changed. Then you realize that there is no Web page output – you can create bulky ‘m4v’ slideshows, but not traditional thumbnail/big image web pages. The decent processing controls in iPhoto have been dumbed down for the iOS generation – people with poor visual sense and undemanding presentation standards.

You can find (normally hidden) adjusters for Sharpening, Definition, Vignetting, White Balance and Levels, and like these the excellent Highlights and Shadows adjusters are hidden, the assumption being that anything other than a slider is too much for the pea brained iOS mentality of the user. Stupefying. Yes, you can still print from Photos, but I recommend exporting the original to Lightroom or Photoshop and doing the job properly where you will see a professional and familiar User Interface.

The controls are there if you can find them.
The dumbing down of the UI continues apace in Cupertino.

Annotating images with text is a joke. It has gone from buggy in the last version of iPhoto to near useless in Photos. The only available choice is for the text to appear on the image itself and there’s no way that I can find of using a neutral background for the text, meaning it inevitably gets lost in the image. Sorry, but EXIF data alone do not cut it for family albums.

Of course, iPhoto, while still usable, is dead. New RAW formats will doubtless not be supported so unless you propose to stick with your existing gear, it will be curtains as soon as you upgrade. And given the modern 2 year life of digital cameras ….

You have to wonder why Apple even bothered here. Or maybe not. Given the shallow mind set of the typical iOS consumer (‘selfies’, for goodness’ sake), it’s what he deserves.