Dear friend,

My name is Anders and I'm the CEO of Brattoo Propaganda Software. I get a lot of questions about the integration between Photos, iCloud, Photostream and iPhone so I intend to highlight those things in this, and the next few letters. This time I’ll start with the HEIC format, which was introduced in iOS 11, and what that means. I know, it gets a bit technical but I thought that it was worth to at least mention the technical aspects of the new format. We have also made Duplicate Annihilator for Photos HEIC aware which I will get back to further down this email. I hope that you will enjoy it and learn something new.

Photos Tagger – more features and even more on the way

Recently we added new features to Photos Tagger like faster keyword extraction and holiday keywords. Now we have discovered some hidden gems deep down in the Photos database and made them available through Photos Tagger. We have discovered that in Photos 4.0 the detected faces are analyzed. Features such as if the the eyes are open, if there is a smile or the face is blurred is stored by Photos. Those perks are not available anywhere in the Photos application but Photos Tagger can extract them and add them as keywords as well. So in addition to names as keywords like ”Anders”, Photos Tagger can now add keywords like ” Anders is smiling” or ”Anders eyes open”. This is a great addition when trying to find high quality photos. This is available today in Photos Tagger v2.1.0.

We have also started to integrate Photos Tagger with your Calendar. If you have the event ”Ken and Mary’s Wedding” in your calendar, Photos Tagger can automatically apply this as a keyword to all photos shot during that event. Expect this feature soon.

Meanwhile you can download and enjoy the current features of Photos Tagger from here https://brattoo.com/#photostagger

Duplicate Annihilator – HEIC format support

With the introduction of the HEIC format in iOS 11 photos with higher quality, but smaller file size, is a fact. We want to keep those as the originals instead of matching JPEGs. Therefore we have added this as a setting in the Duplicate Annihilator for Photos preferences, to make sure that you keep the photos with the highest quality when searching for duplicates. This is a great new feature and it is available today. Download your copy of Duplicate Annihilator for Photos v3.1.0 from https://brattoo.com/#photos

The HEIC format

With the release of iOS 11, Apple announced that it was replacing JPEG files with a new image format called HEIC. HEIC is a more modern format for storing images, developed by the MPEG group, with better compression, higher quality, more vibrant colors and smaller file size.

Until now, most of us have used JPEG which has been the standard for about 20 years. JPEG has been great, giving us good quality and small files, but I’m certain that you have encountered some of its drawbacks. Have you ever taken a picture of a sunset, or a blue sky and noticed that there is color banding, the transition between the blue tones are not seamless. This is caused by the limitations of 8 bit colors.

JPEG is a 8 bit color format which means that each pixel is represented by 8 bits of red, 8 bits of green and 8 bits of blue. So what does this mean? Eight bits gives us 256 possible combinations for each color: red, grey and blue. Together red, green and blue can be combined in to any color. So 256*256*256 combinations gives us a palette of roughly 16.8 million possible colors. The problem is that when we take that photo the blue sky the variations are small but important, and there simply are not enough of sky blue colors in our palette.

We need a bigger palette! HEIC offers us that since it supports 16 bits per color. 16 bits equals 65,535 combinations and now we get a massive color palette of 65,535*65,535*65,535 colors. Perhaps a bit overkill so the iPhone uses only 10 bits per color. 10 bits gives us 1,024 possible combinations and a palette of about a billion colors. With a billion colors we have plenty of sky blue tones and the color banding in that photo exist no more. Great!

I know, it is a bit technical but it might be interesting to get a bit of insight in how and why it works. There are other benefits with HEIC, with smother transitions between neighboring blocks and better compression algorithms, but I’ll leave that out.

As I mentioned above, HEIC came with iOS 11 and to be able to also use it on your Mac you need at least macOS 10.13 High Sierra.

If you want to use, or not use, HEIC as the format when you take photos it can be set in the preferences of your iPhone. Settings->Camera->Formats

HEIC and Photostream

Not everything is perfect in the HEIC world, if you are using Photostream and import that stream to your Photos Library on your Mac you might notice something strange. The photos that the Photostream delivers are not in HEIC, they are JPEG. Unfortunately this means that if you later connect your iPhone to your Mac with a cable, and import your photos to Photos, Photos will not detect that the HEIC photo is a duplicate of the JPEG photo that came with Photostream. Luckily the duplicates can be detected with Duplicate Annihilator for Photos, if running in Perceptive mode. Since Duplicate Annihilator for Photos version 3.1.0 you have the option to keep the HEIC photo as the original.

Exporting HEIC from Photos

In a previous newsletter I wrote about exporting from Photos, and that is important to catch up on with the HEIC format. When you drag a photo from the Photos application, it is automatically converted to JPEG. If you want to keep it in the original format, like HEIC, then you need to hold own the option key when you drag the photo from the Photos application. It is very important that you press and hold the option key before you click and drag with your mouse, otherwise it will just be a regular JPEG export. It is worth mentioning that if you use the option key export and export a Live photo then both the original photo and the MOV file, which is the Live part of the photo, will be exported as two separate files.

This newsletter and previous letters

Several of our readers have requested that we resend previous emails so that they could catch up on earlier tips and information. All previous emails are available online in our Newsletter section at https://newsletter.brattoo.com

The free apps section

As I have mentioned in previous letters we have received requests on how to automate some tasks in Apple Photos or tasks related to photos. Those tasks might be tedious to work out manually but are easy for us to solve. The apps include a tool to set the Photos Titles based on filename (with or without file extension), a tool to copy and apply GPS coordinates between photos and finally a utility to set the correct file dates on image files based on the photo date stored in the metadata within the image files. You’ll find all our free apps at https://free.brattoo.com.

Upgrades

Finally I would just like to tell you that our upgrade discount for Duplicate Annihilator for Photos is still available. For only $4.95 you can upgrade any old Duplicate Annihilator license to Duplicate Annihilator for Photos and for just one dollar ($1.00) more you can upgrade any old Duplicate Annihilator license to the Duplicate Annihilator Toolbox including a family pack! This means that you get five licenses for you and your family for all versions of Duplicate Annihilator including iPhoto, Aperture, iOS and Photos for only $5.95.

Get the upgrade from: https://upgrade.brattoo.com

Thank you for your time, I hope that you found this email informative. If you have any feedback, suggestions, questions or ideas then please reply to this email. I read all emails and reply to them in person.

Best Regards,
Anders, CEO and Founder, Brattoo Propaganda Software