Hi,

My name is Anders and I'm the CEO of Brattoo Propaganda Software. In my last few letters I’ve been quite technical talking about iCloud, Family Sharing and file formats. But now, when the summer is approaching, perhaps I should give you some hints on how to make integrating with Photos easier. Especially for those days in the hammock with only one hand on the keyboard. I know, each time I mention summer I always hear from readers in Australia who say that down there winter is coming. But hey, your winter is like the three days of summer we get here in Sweden.

Photos Tagger – more features added and more on the way

I have previously mentioned Peter in New Zealand, who made us aware that New Zealand specific holidays were missing in Photos Tagger. Well, no longer. Those were added in Photos Tagger v2.4.0. Then, I told you about David from the Netherlands who asked for the option to assign Holiday keywords, based on the location where the photos were taken. That option was added in Photos Tagger v2.5.0.

So, two new features have been added as well as some bug fixes. All the new additions are available for download today. But we don’t stop there, we have had some reports that the integration with the Calendar is very slow, which is unfortunately caused by a known bug in macOS. We are working on a way to solve this. David, who I mentioned above, has also requested a way to mark unnamed faces in Photos. In iPhoto unnamed faces were visualized, but in Photos there is no easy way to locate them. We are digging down deep into the Photos internals, and are working on a way to solve this as well.

Meanwhile, download and enjoy Photos Tagger v2.5.0 from here https://brattoo.com/#photostagger.

Duplicate Annihilator – more fine tuning

With Family Sharing, Photo Stream, photos received by email or messenger, we tend to get more and more cluttered libraries with duplicates. The duplicates more and more tend to be of different file sizes, compressions and even file formats. This is why we added Perceptive mode to Duplicate Annihilator. Perceptive mode detects duplicates based on the contents of the photos rather than comparing the images files based on checksums. Perceptive mode means that Duplicate Annihilator compares the photos as you would do, with your own eyes. Then with a set of detected duplicates that look the same, Duplicate Annihilator chooses the photo with the highest quality as the original, and marks the other ones as duplicates.

Perceptive mode has been very well received and we are now working on version 2.0 of that algorithm, to make it even smarter. Download Duplicate Annihilator for Photos from here https://brattoo.com/#photos

Work smarter with Photos

As I mentioned above, those days in the hammock with only one hand one keyboard calls for some keyboard shortcuts, to make integration with Photos easier. You’ll be surprised how much faster you will be able to get things done in Photos with just a few extra shortcuts that you might not know about.

Navigating the Photos application

Most likely you know that you can use the arrow keys to navigate around your photos, you might even know that if you hold down either the up or down keys it will increase the speed. But did you now that if you also hold down the fn-key the arrow keys will act differently. fn+arrow up or down scrolls the photos one page at a time, fn+arrow left or right takes you to the first or last photo of your photos browser.

Don’t forget the tab-key which shifts the focus from the photos browser to the left frame with the libraries and albums (which you also can navigate with your arrow keys). Hit the tab-key again and the focus is moved to the search field. Hit tab again and you are back in the photos browser. So with the tab-key you cycle through photos->libraries->search and if you hold down the shift key as well the cycle goes the other way.

Searching in Photos

Searching in Photos is a big thing and if you don’t want to cycle to the search field with the tab-key you can get there directly with Command+F. As you type away in the search field Photos will give you suggestions and you can access those as well. Just navigate them with the arrow keys up and down and hit the return key, when the option you like is highlighted. When you have hit the return key you can instantly start navigating the photos with the arrow keys.

Metadata

You probably know about the Info window in Photos where the metadata about your photos are shown, including all those keywords added by Photos Tagger. You open it by using the Command+I key combination. Unfortunately there is no easy way to start editing those metadata without using the mouse or trackpad. This brings us to why you might want to look into the Photos Keyword Manager.

The Photos Keyword Manager and a hint

The Keyword Manager lists all your keywords, but that is not what we are going to look at now. Let’s checkout keyboard shortcuts instead. The thing is, you can assign shortcuts to keywords, and those keywords can be added to photos by using the keyboard. This is only possible if the Keyword Manager window is open. By clicking the Edit Keywords button, in the lower left corner of the Keyword Manager window, you will be presented a list of all available keywords. This is also where you add or delete keywords.

Now, mark one keyword and click on the Shortcut button, or if you prefer directly in the shortcuts column. You can now assign a single character for that keyword which will cause that keyword to be assigned to any marked photo, when the Keyword Manager window is open.

You might wonder why you would want this. I’ll give you an example, you can use this to recover a feature that most users of iPhoto and Aperture are missing in Photos. Do you remember the ranking with 1 to 5 stars, and the flag icon which was replaced with the heart icon in Photos? Why not create six keywords? *, **, ***, ****, ***** and Flag and assign the shortcuts 1 thru 5 and f to those keywords? Now you have that feature again, and you can rank your photos or flag them with just a key shortcut.

Since we talked about the heart icon; you can mark a favorite photo by using the period key.

There are many more keyboard shortcuts in Photos, and you can find a list of them in the Photos help menu. Please let me know of your favorite shortcuts.

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