Dear friend

My name is Anders and I am the CEO of Brattoo Propaganda Software. A few weeks back we emailed you about the state of Duplicate Annihilator and we received a lot of positive feedback and questions. Thank you, my staff and I really appreciate it. In this email I will tell you a little about the new Photos 2.0 that came with macOS Sierra. I hope that you will find it interesting and please let me know if you have any feedback on this email.

iPhoto is dead – long live iPhoto

In my last email I claimed that with macOS Sierra you would no longer be able to use iPhoto. Well, I was wrong. At the time, iPhoto was disabled in the latest developer version of macOS Sierra. But as it turned out, it was enabled in the public beta and eventually also in the final release of macOS Sierra. So you are still able to use iPhoto and Aperture. 

Photos

There are many opinions when Photos is mentioned. Some like it and some don’t. Professionals that used Aperture are frustrated over the lack of features. iPhoto users also noticed a lack of a few features but appreciate the speed of Photos. Some feel abandoned by Apple and have left it to use Adobe Lightroom. And some others find Photos totally awesome. Let’s just agree to disagree, we all have different needs.

We have received quite a lot of questions regarding Photos and how it works, so here are a few quick tips.

The sidebar

Yes, there is a sidebar in Photos but you’ll have to turn it on in the View menu. While you are in the View menu you might also want to set Photos to show some metadata like Title next to the images.

The Info window

Many of you have asked where to find more info about the images. That can be found in the Info window. Enable it with the command+I key combination or in the Window menu. In the Info window you can find information such as title, date and time, filename, location, keywords and description.

Hidden photos

In Photos you can hide photos by using the menu Image->Hide Photo or by the key combination command+L. This also means that you can hide photos by accident and then you might wonder were to find them. They can be viewed in the Hidden album in the Sidebar but it has to be turned on in the menu View->Show Hidden Photo Album.

Photos or All Photos

In Photos you have the Photos View and the All Photos Album. So why are there two of them and which one should you use? The Photos View is split into Moments, Collections, and Years and it is sorted by photo date. The Photos View will not show hidden photos. The All Photos Album is sorted by the date the photos were imported into Photos and not the date the photo was shot. The All Photos Album also shows hidden images. This means that the order the photos are shown in, and sometimes even the number of photos, differ between the Photos View and the All Photos Album. The sort order cannot be changed on either of them.

Frustrating and inconvenient some say. What if you want them sorted by Title or by reverse photos shot date? The answer is simple, create a new Smart Album that shows all images that are not hidden. Now you have a complete album where you can sort the content and understand how and why they are there.

Importing photos from file system

Let’s start by saying that you should not import photos by dragging a folder of photos to Photos. It may seem like it works but when doing this Photos may fail silently. You will think that it worked as it should when in reality you have lost photos. If you instead drag the individual contents of a folder it will tell you if it fails. If your import is unsuccessful just drag them again and it will likely succeed. Sometimes you may need to add them one by one. Frustrating, but will probably be fixed in future versions of Photos. Instead use the File->Import menu in Photos and you will get a better result. If you hold down the option key while selecting File->Import you can import without reviewing the photos first.

Importing Photos from phone or memory card

When you connect your phone or memory card Photos will by default open and an import window will occur. Some find this irritating. It can be avoided by unchecking the Open Photos for this device checkbox in the upper left corner of the Photos window.

Did you know that you can continue to work in Photos while importing? And did you know that there is a small progress wheel that you can click on to see how the import is going?

Reduce Motion

There is a lot of motion in the Photos interface and some people feel seasick when working in Photos. In the Photos preferences there is a checkbox named Reduce Motion that turns off a few of the movements and replace them with fades instead.  Some find Photos more enjoyable with less motion, and on older computers it will also make Photos run faster.

Duplicates

Photos can’t remove imported duplicates by itself but Duplicate Annihilator for Photos can. If you still use Duplicate Annihilator for iPhoto and would like to upgrade to Duplicate Annihilator for Photos we currently have a discounted upgrade program. For only $4.95 you can upgrade any old Duplicate Annihilator license to Duplicate Annihilator for Photos. For just $1.00 more you can upgrade any old Duplicate Annihilator license to the Duplicate Annihilator Toolbox including a family pack, which means that you get five licenses for you and your family. This includes all versions of Duplicate Annihilator including iPhoto, Aperture, iOS and Photos.

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

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

Best Regards
Anders, CEO and Founder, Brattoo Propaganda Software