Spotted extensions capabilities for Photos as “one of the many new features” listed on the summary keynote slide at the end of the OS X 10.11 presentation. A glimmer of hope for Photos!
Swift 2 just means some new language features which make developing more comfortable and Open Sourcing it was actually a mandatory step for giving the language a chance outside of the Apple ecosystem. Particularily if apps are client/server - with Swift being Open Source and available on Linux you can develop the server component running on cheap Linux boxes and still can directly reuse code from a Swift based Client app. The more interesting question will be how much of the runtime libraries will be available to other platforms.
That’s a much further down the line scenario and won’t be a deal breaker on whether Photos expands more or not. That scenario will play out regardless of Swift. Right now there are no major Mac apps written in Swift, including Apple’s native ones. There are some iOS ones but only small ones and brand new. Actually the WWDC app is written in Swift. More common scenario is old objective c code mixed with updated code in Swift. Swift is still young and maturing and not in a fixed state yet. We’ll have a true understanding of Photos future before it is written in Swift.
in the preview page, it states “You can also sort your albums — and the contents inside them — by date, title, and more.”.. maybe the “more” part refers to star ratings?.. here’s hoping.
I don’t understand why we have to wait for a new OS to have some of these basic organization features. And those of us who might not be able to update to El Capitan, at least right away, will still not have access to the new features. This is basic stuff for goodness sake, just add it now Apple. And allow us to merge Photos Libraries now too.
Although I think this features are coming very late, I don’t think updates are necessarily that tightly bound to major OS updates.
After all, we did get Photos with 10.10.3 and not with 10.10.0.
What’s bothering me more is whether Aperture will work on El Capitan. I’m not willing to update my system to a new OS not knowing how well Photos is working when I can’t fall back to Aperture.
I for one will install El Capitan on a seperate usb drive.. That way my main workhorse will stay on Yosemite and I can test Aperture on 10.11… Will wait for public beta to install it.
In Aperture I had a structure of folders for every year and projects within that folders. With the export to Photos everything came over except for one odd thing.
The years 2013 and 2014 are missing in the tree structure in Photos. The actual albums with all pictures in it from those years are there when I search for them. There is no way to show the location of those albums in the tree structure.
Is this last thing a feature that has been added to the new Photos?
As far as I can see the Photos.app included on the first release of El Capitan is identical to that of Yosemite. It is described as Version 1.1 (300.32.0). I see no facility to order photos, or any change at all from before. Perhaps I need to wait for a later 1o.11 build. (If I know Apple I won’t have to wait long!)
That Apple did not show it off during the actual presentation is telling. I think its fair to say this is the first any of the developers (whether big names or small) have heard of it so they only have the editing extensions framework now to start to work with. They will also need to go through a vetting process as the final extension will only be available through the Mac App Store. So there are a couple of stages that need to take place before a beta version with the functionality comes through.
I just noticed last night that the most recent version of Photos (1.1 (305.50.0)) shipped with El Capitan has a new item at the bottom of the Edit menu - “Plugins”. It just leads to the Accessories area of System preferences, which notes that Photos is not presently active in accessories. Sounds hopeful, though.
Jason Snell has a preview of Photos 1.1 on Sixcolors.com
The key new features are:
Geotagging
Batch titling
Album sorting
Editing extensions
Other stuff
These could obviously change in the released version. Read Jason’s piece for more info.
You can get it early with the El Capitan public beta released today - if you’ve got the nerve to install it - and hopefully a 2nd computer to do it on.
I know several vendors want to make plug-ins for Photos, but don’t know if they are now actively working on it. I’d love to have my On1 suite ported over, but fortunately they have an excellent stand-alone application in addition to the plug-ins.
Can you give us some more details? What vendors have expressed interest in making a plugin for Photos? I am still to find a website of plugin makers that even acknowledge Photos (except for Nik, which mentioned that since Photos extensions would only work with software/plug-ins provided through the App Store, they state Nik Plugins are not compatible).
There is a lack of info everywhere and the new version of Photos that actually support the extension capabilities is not out yet doesn't help.
I think Apple chose the worst name in the planet for a software. No matter how you try to search, you will hardly get anything specific to the software since the name is so generic and inherited to what it and all others do.
I am hoping for some to release the plugins once El Capitan is out… but not really holding my breath…
ACME Color effects? Would you mind directing us to their website or where in the El Capitan Preview page that this is mentioned? I am afraid I never used their plugin.
Sorry, I was half trying to play along with Apple’s joke. Pretty sure they’re just paying homage to the Roadrunner here. As far as I can tell, ACME doesn’t actually exist. But if you scroll down to where they talk about extensions for Photos, the (faked?) screenshot shows “ACME Color Effects” at the top of the window. Presumably this is just before the anvil slides off the wrong edge of Wyle E. Coyote’s contraption. Cheers.
I did the same thing. As I was typing A C M E, it slowly dawned on me and then I saw it in lower case and the white flag popped up in my brain’s surrender. Meep meep.
Does anyone know if there is any hope of the Nik collection of tools ever being functional in Photos? Second, I have not upgraded to Yosemite yet for fear of losing my ability to use my Nik editing tools in Aperture….does anyone have any comments on this?
Does Open Source for Swift 2 mean even more hope for Photos?
No - this doesn't relate in any way.
Swift 2 just means some new language features which make developing more comfortable and Open Sourcing it was actually a mandatory step for giving the language a chance outside of the Apple ecosystem. Particularily if apps are client/server - with Swift being Open Source and available on Linux you can develop the server component running on cheap Linux boxes and still can directly reuse code from a Swift based Client app. The more interesting question will be how much of the runtime libraries will be available to other platforms.
http://neonsqua.re
That’s a much further down the line scenario and won’t be a deal breaker on whether Photos expands more or not. That scenario will play out regardless of Swift. Right now there are no major Mac apps written in Swift, including Apple’s native ones. There are some iOS ones but only small ones and brand new. Actually the WWDC app is written in Swift. More common scenario is old objective c code mixed with updated code in Swift. Swift is still young and maturing and not in a fixed state yet. We’ll have a true understanding of Photos future before it is written in Swift.
It’s on the OSX developer pages as well:
App Extensions for Photos
Create app extensions that give users access to your custom filters and editing tools directly from within the Photos app on Mac.
Peter
Well spotted Peter!
Here’s a link to the documentation with even more detail https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/General/Conceptual…
But doesn’t seem to be updated yet with OS X detail still just iOS
I’m waiting for this and holding my breath! Please make it so!!!!!!!
Milo
www.milosmetal.com
The preview page also shows extensions, as well as the ability to sort in albums and folders.
Hey Apple, this is all good! Now how about stars?
in the preview page, it states “You can also sort your albums — and the contents inside them — by date, title, and more.”.. maybe the “more” part refers to star ratings?.. here’s hoping.
SKR Imaging
https://skrimaging.wordpress.com
I don’t understand why we have to wait for a new OS to have some of these basic organization features. And those of us who might not be able to update to El Capitan, at least right away, will still not have access to the new features. This is basic stuff for goodness sake, just add it now Apple. And allow us to merge Photos Libraries now too.
~Debbie
Well - this is the downside of Photos being tightly bound to the OS. I always presented it a being a part of the OS - like the Finder.
http://neonsqua.re
Although I think this features are coming very late, I don’t think updates are necessarily that tightly bound to major OS updates.
After all, we did get Photos with 10.10.3 and not with 10.10.0.
What’s bothering me more is whether Aperture will work on El Capitan. I’m not willing to update my system to a new OS not knowing how well Photos is working when I can’t fall back to Aperture.
I for one will install El Capitan on a seperate usb drive.. That way my main workhorse will stay on Yosemite and I can test Aperture on 10.11… Will wait for public beta to install it.
SKR Imaging
https://skrimaging.wordpress.com
I have been running Aperture without problem on El Capitan since yesterday.
Alan
That’s great news.
Can you check if another problem is fixed?
In Aperture I had a structure of folders for every year and projects within that folders. With the export to Photos everything came over except for one odd thing.
The years 2013 and 2014 are missing in the tree structure in Photos. The actual albums with all pictures in it from those years are there when I search for them. There is no way to show the location of those albums in the tree structure.
Is this last thing a feature that has been added to the new Photos?
As far as I can see the Photos.app included on the first release of El Capitan is identical to that of Yosemite. It is described as Version 1.1 (300.32.0). I see no facility to order photos, or any change at all from before. Perhaps I need to wait for a later 1o.11 build. (If I know Apple I won’t have to wait long!)
Alan
That Apple did not show it off during the actual presentation is telling. I think its fair to say this is the first any of the developers (whether big names or small) have heard of it so they only have the editing extensions framework now to start to work with. They will also need to go through a vetting process as the final extension will only be available through the Mac App Store. So there are a couple of stages that need to take place before a beta version with the functionality comes through.
I just noticed last night that the most recent version of Photos (1.1 (305.50.0)) shipped with El Capitan has a new item at the bottom of the Edit menu - “Plugins”. It just leads to the Accessories area of System preferences, which notes that Photos is not presently active in accessories. Sounds hopeful, though.
Alan
Jason Snell has a preview of Photos 1.1 on Sixcolors.com
The key new features are:
These could obviously change in the released version. Read Jason’s piece for more info.
You can get it early with the El Capitan public beta released today - if you’ve got the nerve to install it - and hopefully a 2nd computer to do it on.
Thomas
I think it’s time to try El Capitan beta!
Milo
www.milosmetal.com
Looks like it will be usable in version 2.0 ;)
Just wondering if anyone knows anyone any company working on plug-ins for Photos. That would be encouraging to know someone is working on it!
Rafael
http://www.mydarkroom.ca
I know several vendors want to make plug-ins for Photos, but don’t know if they are now actively working on it. I’d love to have my On1 suite ported over, but fortunately they have an excellent stand-alone application in addition to the plug-ins.
Bill Jurasz
Austin Texas
Hey Bill,
Can you give us some more details? What vendors have expressed interest in making a plugin for Photos? I am still to find a website of plugin makers that even acknowledge Photos (except for Nik, which mentioned that since Photos extensions would only work with software/plug-ins provided through the App Store, they state Nik Plugins are not compatible).
There is a lack of info everywhere and the new version of Photos that actually support the extension capabilities is not out yet doesn't help.
I think Apple chose the worst name in the planet for a software. No matter how you try to search, you will hardly get anything specific to the software since the name is so generic and inherited to what it and all others do.
I am hoping for some to release the plugins once El Capitan is out… but not really holding my breath…
RFP
Rafael
http://www.mydarkroom.ca
According to the El Capitan preview page on apple.com, ACME Color Effects is working on a plugin!
ACME Color effects? Would you mind directing us to their website or where in the El Capitan Preview page that this is mentioned? I am afraid I never used their plugin.
thx RFP
Rafael
http://www.mydarkroom.ca
Sorry, I was half trying to play along with Apple’s joke. Pretty sure they’re just paying homage to the Roadrunner here. As far as I can tell, ACME doesn’t actually exist. But if you scroll down to where they talk about extensions for Photos, the (faked?) screenshot shows “ACME Color Effects” at the top of the window. Presumably this is just before the anvil slides off the wrong edge of Wyle E. Coyote’s contraption. Cheers.
LOL !!!! My bad! The problem is that I went straight into Google and tried to find it! First thing I found was this:
http://www.acme.com.cn/Details.aspx?lang=en&id=423
Should have thought about the Coyote and Roadrunner for sure! This is the Apple we can trust these days!
Cheers
RFP
Rafael
http://www.mydarkroom.ca
I did the same thing. As I was typing A C M E, it slowly dawned on me and then I saw it in lower case and the white flag popped up in my brain’s surrender. Meep meep.
Does anyone know if there is any hope of the Nik collection of tools ever being functional in Photos? Second, I have not upgraded to Yosemite yet for fear of losing my ability to use my Nik editing tools in Aperture….does anyone have any comments on this?
Tracy
I don’t think that we will ever see the Google plug-ins distributed through the Mac App Store: https://support.google.com/nikcollection/answer/6063688?hl=en
In Yosemite the collection is working fine with Aperture. But be sure to have the latest versions of the plug-ins.
https://support.google.com/nikcollection/answer/3000889?hl=en&ref_topic=…
Looks like McPhun have some pretty good plugins….this video has me excited:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hMMC-f5JF8&feature=youtu.be
see also https://www.ephotozine.com/article/photos-for-mac-extensions-from-macphun-28097#
Great to see! Wonder if OnOne will follow as well (I’ve already got their tools, but McPhun is great stuff as well).
Bill Jurasz
Austin Texas
Apparently next OSX update will bring some good news.