Dear friend,

My name is Anders and I'm the CEO of Brattoo Propaganda Software. In my last letter I went technical and described the HEIC image format. It was introduced in iOS 11, which is based on the feedback I got, which was very much appreciated. I have also received a lot of questions about how to convert from JPEG to HEIC, which I have to admit I have no real good answer to. There is a tool called “Half” that claims to do the conversion, but it is not available in the Swedish App Store so I haven’t been able to try it. If you know about a tool that can convert from JPEG to HEIC I would love to hear about it. In this letter I will also dive into another one of those things that we come across every now and then – the Photo Stream.

Photos Tagger – now integrated with your calendar.

Recently we added the option to extract metadata about facial attributes such as “smiling” and “eyes open” and add them as keywords to your photos in Photos with Photos Tagger. Now we have added the option to let Photos Tagger collect events from your Calendar and add them as keywords to your photos based on time and date. So, if you attended “Ken and Mary’s wedding” and have that as an event in your calendar then Photos Tagger can add “Ken and Mary’s Wedding” as a keyword to all photos shot during that event. Great for keeping your photos tagged with personal data and help you find those photos in the future. The Calendar integration comes with Photos Tagger version 2.3.0 and is available today from https://brattoo.com/#photostagger

David from the Netherlands contacted me. He asked for the option to base the Holiday keywords feature on the location where the photos were shot, so that photos shot when on vacation have the local holidays assigned to them based on GPS location. It is a great idea and we are working on implementing it. Thank you David. 

Duplicate Annihilator – your feedback is essential

Last month we added the option to keep HEIC files as originals, which is great when Duplicate Annihilator determines which photo to keep in a set of duplicates. We also got few reports on a bug that prevented Duplicate Annihilator from scanning for duplicates. Those bug reports are essential to us and we are eager to fix them. So please reach out to us when you get an error message, we always try to solve bugs as quickly as possible. If you encountered this bug last month then I’m happy to say that it was fixed in Duplicate Annihilator for Photos v3.1.1 and you can download it from https://brattoo.com/#photos

Photos Modify Photos Date – a new free application.

Now and then we get requests about features that can be daunting to perform manually, but are trivial for us to write an application for. Those applications end up in our free apps section at https://free.brattoo.com. This time, Douglas in New Hampshire, reached out to us with a problem that we are all too familiar with. If you use a DSLR camera you might forget to set the date and time when on vacation, so when you return home and import your photos all the dates are wrong. Now you can either just leave it or manually change all the photo dates one at a time which is very time consuming. With our new tool Photos Modify Photos Date you can select all those photos and set how many days, hours and minutes you want to increase or decrease the dates with. This is very useful and will help you keep your historical photos in the proper place, making future access much easier. You can download Photos Modify Photos Date among with our other free tools from https://free.brattoo.com.

Photo Stream

You have probably seen it on your iPhone or in your Photos Library, the Photo Stream. What is it exactly and how does it work? Think of it as an Album, but an Album that syncs across your devices. So when you take a photo with your iPhone it will be added to your Photo Stream and then also shown in the Photo Stream on your Mac and TV.

The Photo Stream uploads your most recent photos and are shown on all your devices but there are limits. It is limited to your last 1000 photos during the last 30 days. If you shot many photos you might also want to know that there are additional limits which are 1000 photos/hour, 10.000 photos/day and 25.000 photos/month. 

Photo Stream supports photos in JPEG, TIFF, PNG and most RAW formats. You might remember my last newsletter where I told you about HEIC photos. HEIC photos are also imported to Photo Stream but are converted to JPEG. This can result in duplicates which I will tell you more about later. Photo Stream does not support video or live photos. 

Downloading photos from Photo Stream.

When you download a photo from Photo Stream to your device there are a few quirks you might want to know about. When you download a photo to your iPhone or iPad it is not downloaded in full resolution. When you download it to your Mac it is in full resolution, but HEIC photos have been converted to JPEG. 

So what does this mean? Let’s say that you take a photo in HEIC format on your iPhone, it is added to your Photo Stream and your Mac is set to automatically import the Photo Stream. Now the photo can be found as an HEIC image on your Phone and as a JPEG photo on your Mac. Now you connect your iPhone to your computer and import the photos and voilà, your library now contains both the JPEG version and the HEIC version of the same photo. You got duplicates. Now consider that you have another iOS device where you have imported the same photo from the Photo Stream>, as a version with lower resolution and then import the photos of that device to your computer. Now you have triplicates! Lucky enough Duplicate Annihilator for Photos can sort out this mess with Perceptive mode and the keep HEIC over JPEG settings. 

About the same things can happen if you use both Photo Stream and iCloud Photos Library, and have set your Mac to automatically import the Photo Stream. That being said, there is really no reason to use Photo Stream if you have a iCloud Photos Library.

Deleting photos from Photo Stream.

It is very easy to delete a photo from your Photo Stream. When you delete it from the Photo Stream it will be deleted from the Photo Stream on all devices. If you delete it from the Photo Roll on the device where you took the photo then it will be deleted from the Photo Roll, iCloud Photos Library and Photo Stream. However, it will not be deleted from any library that has imported the photo from the Photo Stream.

More things about Photo Stream.

If you take photos in burst mode then only the favorite one in the burst sequence will be added to the Photo Stream, unless you set your iPhone to also upload the complete burst. Settings -> iCloud -> Photos -> Upload Burst Photos.

If your Photo Stream seems to fail you should remember that your iPhone will only upload photos to Photo Stream when it is connected to wi-fi and when the battery is above 20%. It also important to remember that turning on Photo Stream on one of your devices doesn’t mean that it is turned on on your other devices. And finally, Photo Stream is connected to your Apple ID account so you need to use the same Apple ID on all your devices.

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