With macOS High Sierra, Apple improves its Photos app in several important ways. As with the rest of the OS, it's not a massive redesign, but rather one jammed with tweaks and feature additions that make the app more usable and more powerful. New tools for Live Photos from your iOS devices are among the app's new highlights, and there are other welcome interface updates and editing tools that any Mac photo enthusiast will appreciate. Photos also offers some excellent organization and sharing capabilities. It's an Editors' Choice for free, but you may still want somthing more powerful, such as our photography workflow and consumer photo software top picks, Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop Elements, respectively. On my first run, a message box touting the new features appeared, and the new Photos app had to update my library. This only took a few seconds, since I only had about a hundred photos on my test system, a with a 3.1GHz Core i5 CPU and 8GB of RAM.

1. Editing Apps For Mac
2. Best Photo App For Mac

Interface The UI is clear and easy to navigate. For me, the best change in the update is that your tools are always available—both the organizing left sidebar, and when you get into the editing interface, all the adjustments in the right-side toolbar.

That sounds obvious, but in the last version, if you wanted the Levels adjustment, for example, you had to add it as an option—every time you opened a new photo. The starting page of the app has four viewing modes, accessible from buttons across the top: Photos, Moments, Collections, and Years. The left rail menu is always present except when you're viewing a single image full screen, and even then you can push the cursor to the left to display it. That rail includes all your organization options, including Favorites, People, Places, Imports, Shared, Albums, and Media Types. So if you only want to view Live Photos you've applied the Loop effect to, it's right there in the rail.

Photo Info, accessible when you're viewing a single photo, appears as a dialog in the center of the image, not as a sidebar the way it does in Microsoft Photos. I find the sidebars more convenient, since the dialog covers part of the photo you're trying to look at.

The info box shows details such as camera model, exposure settings, optional keywords, tagged faces, and a map if location data is available. Full-screen view is nicely implemented, and, thankfully, in this update, you can zoom whether you're viewing or editing—another seemingly obvious capability, but for some reason, you couldn't always zoom in with the previous version. Import and Organize When you stick a memory card into your Mac, Photos usually pops up its Import screen. It can handle raw camera files from popular digital cameras. The Photos page simply groups your images by date. You can zoom from years to months to days in what are called Moments (not to be confused with Memories, which I'll talk about below). Your only option at import is to choose whether to delete images from the memory card after import, which I don't recommend, since you may want the photos on another system, the import may fail, and you can always format the card in your camera, a better option.

If you want more options on import—such as keyword tagging, file renaming, or applying presets—look to a more powerful tool, such as or CyberLink PhotoDirector. There are a few ways to see your iPhone photos in Apple Photos on the Mac. You can sync your iPhone using iTunes, sync photos to iCloud, or plug the phone into the USB port, which reveals the Import button at top right. You could also use the separate Image Capture utility, but if you go this route, Photos isn't offered in the file's Open With list in Finder. Also, when I imported this way, my Live Photos were imported as stills. If you sync instead, you can edit Live Photos with the editing tools mentioned below. Once you've imported your photos, the application offers respectable organization capability, much of which is automatic.

You can apply ratings, keyword tags, and location to any photo, as well as designating favorites with a heart icon. The automatic organization is best exemplified in the Albums view, in which you find your photos grouped by People, Places, Screenshots, and Selfies. Of course, you can create your own Albums as well. New Live Photos Tricks The most fun users will have with the new Photos app comes courtesy of three very cool new effects that only work with that type of content: Loop, Bounce, and Long Exposure. The first two are actually video, or animated GIF-type effects. Loop does what its name implies, repeating the short video endlessly. But rather than just being a simple repeat, however, Loop adds transparency to moving objects between plays, for an affecting, ghostly look.

Bounce plays it forwards and backward, and is most fun with actions such as diving into a pool; it also looks great with fireworks. Long exposure has a couple of good uses: You can use it to blur background motion, such as car traffic, or to make a stream or waterfall look glassy. You can see examples of all these in my story. You can now also trim the ends of a Live Photo, in case the beginning or end takes away from the main event. Unfortunately, this trimming doesn't apply to the effects detailed above. Finally, you can now choose which still image appears for a Live Photo when it's not being viewed with motion, for example, if you share it with someone who's not using Apple hardware.

I've found that the Live Photo algorithms usually pick the best frame as the still, but I can see cases where you may want to change it. Smart Search.

Like, Google Photos, and Microsoft OneDrive, Apple Photos has the nifty capability of letting you search based on object categories. For example, type 'dog' or 'tree' to see all your shots of dogs or trees. Unlike Flickr and OneDrive, though, you can't view a page of all the categories detected with the automatically generated tags. The latest version of takes this concept even further, letting you, for example, view all your photos that contain dogs and trees. It's the same with tagged people photos: Elements lets you combine searches; Apple Photos doesn't. What's more, you can't search by file extension in Photos.

Editing Photos Even before you start editing, you get choices of Rotate, Auto Enhance, Share, and Favorite (the heart icon) from the view of all photos. To get to the editing tools, you select a photo and click Edit. This is much more obvious than the last version, which had you click a less-clear icon with adjustment lines.

Editing Apps For Mac

When you tap Edit, a panel of tools opens on the right, and the background turns black, which is helpful for letting you concentrate on the image for editing. Across the top of the editing screen are three main choices Adjust, Filters, and Crop.

To the right are more quick-edit options, including Auto Enhance, Heart, Info, and Rotate. A three-dot icon lets you add external photo tools like and Picktorial, though the list of plug-ins isn't as extensive as what's available for Photoshop Elements. Once you finish with the external app, the photo corrections are preserved in Apple Photos. The Enhance auto-correct tool is among the best I've tested.

Auto-correct tools generally brighten most photos, but Apple Photos also knows when an image needs darkening, instead. The Brilliance adjustment reduces highlights and pumps up shadows simultaneously, which can really help an image look better balanced. In addition to this, all the lighting tools I look for are present: Exposure, Highlights, Shadows, Brightness, Contrast, and Black Point. You no longer have to add controls for Definition Histogram, Levels, Noise Reduction, Sharpen, and Vignette—these always accessible from drop-down menus in the right panel. New for the High Sierra release is Curves, which offers a powerful way to adjust image tones that some photo fans can't live without. All this brings the app into the territory of enthusiast photo editing software.

Unfortunately, invoking them isn't sticky: You have to re-add them every time you want to use them. Noise reduction works as well as it does in most of the competition, effectively smoothing out graininess. But there are no parameters aside from strength; Lightroom adds luminance and chrominance controls. Missing is any chromatic aberration correction. For that, look to. Gone are the fancy color sliders of iPhoto's corrections for White Balance, but you still get the ability to use a dropper to set white balance based on neutral gray or skin tones.

A right-click option lets you create a duplicate of your current edit, which is helpful. I also like the Revert to Original option button and right-click choice, for those times when you just need to start over. Crop also offers straightening, with an on-screen protractor for angle measurement. You get the standard aspect ratio presets like 1:1 and 16:9, and there's' even an Auto option, if you want to let the program decide how to crop and level your image. This gave me one funny result, where a person's head was parallel with the image edge, but everything else was skewed since he was leaning.

But for most photos, it did a decent job, though the crops aren't as aggressive as some of Microsoft Photos or Photoshop Element's automated suggestions. Of course, you don't have to accept any program's auto-crop suggestion, but it can be useful to see what a program considers good options. The program has completely new Filters. Of course, you could use Photos' light and color adjustments after applying a filter. The filters are meant to enhance the image rather than apply zany looks. You get Vivid and Dramatic, each with Warm and Cool choices, and three tasteful black-and-white filters. Unfortunately, (or fortunately, if you're a hands-off type) they're not adjustable at all, unlike Photoshop Elements' highly adjustable filters.

Blemish removal worked very well in my testing of the Retouch tool, though it's not as subtle as what you get with Photoshop Elements. Apple Photos' Red-eye correction continues the fine tradition of excellence familiar from iPhoto. Its automatic mode finds the eyes and yields well-delineated, jet-black pupils. Memories Automatic curation of albums has been appearing in photo software for a while. We've seen it in Microsoft Photos, and now Apple Photos. I have to say I'm initially disappointed so far in Apple's implementation, though this kind of tool requires a span of a few months to really see how it's working. Has created some duds for me, but it's also created some gems, and most importantly, it offers excellent customization options and easy online sharing.

I'm amazed, however, that with Apple Photos you can't even add or remove photos from a Memory, or change the banner images. Google Photos, too, does a much better job with auto-galleries, letting you add and remove images to taste. Tagging People Apple claims that Photos, which scans your pictures without your asking, uses better face-recognition technology, but it still thought a Samoyed dog's face was human. Face recognition has improved in all the apps I've seen that use it, but I feel it will never be foolproof. We are, however, past the days of software thinking a pattern in a bush's leaves is a face, I'm glad to say. Once you've identified some people in the app, they appear in Albums People.

You can choose favorites, and confirm additional faces. Each person even gets his or her own page, similar to the program's Memories pages, showing a cover image, what the program considers the best four shots of the person, related people, and a map if there are any geotagged images with the face. You can actually add a tagged person to a Memory, too. ICloud Libraries and Sharing Photos offers a good selection of sharing possibilities. The standard up-arrow sharing icon can send images directly to Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, as well as to Apple services like Messenger and Mail. But what Apple really wants you to do is to save all your photos to iCloud Photo Library.

It's part of Apple's push to move all your data to iCloud. But for many users, including myself, this means doling out a monthly fee for storage.

You only get 5GB's worth free. Fee aside, however, it's a very good service, especially for people committed to the Apple ecosystem.

Best Photo App For Mac

It makes all your photos from all you iDevices available from all the others, automatically. You get a choice of downloading full image file sizes or compressed files to reduce the drain on your hard drive. It's also what enables Photo Sharing, which creates persistent albums that you and those you share with can add photos at any time. Unfortunately, only Apple products can view the shared iCloud albums, and the email view of a Memory is inferior, just a batch of photos, some of which appeared upside-down in one email inbox. For physical output, the application offers respectable printing options, with Contact Sheet and custom aspect ratios, though it's not as advanced as Lightroom's print options, which include soft proofing and custom layouts. Apple's book-printing capabilities, on the other hand, are top-notch, along with its custom cards and calendars.

You access these from the Projects menu, which also offers slideshows and prints. Softcover books start at just $9.99. And if that's not enough the app now offers an API letting third-party print outfits like Shutterfly and Mpix integrate with the Create menu. Photo Power, the Apple Way Apple has fixed a lot of the issues I had when I last tested Photos, especially when it comes to the way the interface works. The program feels like a well-oiled machine now, and I experienced only one unexpected program shutdown in many days of testing.

The one thing still missing—and it's not huge—is an ability to customize the automatically created Memories galleries. That one feature trails similar features found in both Google Photos and Window 10's included Microsoft Photos app. Apple Photos is more than adequate for most photography novices, and it offers enough editing tools to satisfy those looking for a bit of extra control. IPhone shooters, in particular, will love its Live Photo special effects. For all this, Apple Photos has now earned a PCMag Editors' Choice. Those who want more editing options can buy fellow Editors' Choices Adobe Photoshop Elements, Lightroom, and even to the highly rated, all of which offer Mac versions.

But Apple Photos is free, and it offers everything many Mac users need.

ICloud Photos. One convenient home for all your photos and videos. ICloud Photos gives you access to your entire Mac photo and video library from all your devices. If you shoot a snapshot, slo-mo, or selfie on your iPhone, it’s automatically added to iCloud Photos — so it appears on your Mac, your iOS devices, Apple TV, iCloud.com, and your PC. Even the photos and videos imported from your DSLR, GoPro, or drone to your Mac appear on all your iCloud Photos–enabled devices. And since your collection is organized the same way across your Apple devices, navigating your library always feels familiar.

Fill your library, not your device. ICloud Photos can help you make the most of the space on your Mac. When you choose “Optimize Mac Storage,” all your full‑resolution photos and videos are stored in iCloud in their original formats, with storage-saving versions kept on your Mac as space is needed. You can also optimize storage on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, so you can access more photos and videos than ever before. You get 5GB of free storage in iCloud — and as your library grows, you have the option to choose a plan for up to 2TB.

Quickly find what you’re looking for with the always‑on sidebar. You can go right to your favorites, or view your library organized by people or places.

There are albums that automatically collect your videos, selfies, panoramas, and other media types. You’ll find all the albums you create in My Albums. Moving your content around is as simple as dragging and dropping, with a handy selection counter that shows you how many items you’ve selected. And you can filter by criteria like favorites, edited, videos, and keywords. Perfect your best shots with powerful editing tools.

Create standout photos with a comprehensive set of powerful but easy-to-use editing tools. Instantly transform photos taken in Portrait mode with five different studio-quality lighting effects. Choose Enhance to improve your photo with just a click. Use a filter to give it a new look. Or use Smart Sliders to quickly edit like a pro even if you’re a beginner.

With Markup, you can add text, shapes, sketches, or a signature to your images. You can turn Live Photos into fun, short video loops to share. And you can make edits to photos using apps like Photoshop and Pixelmator, and your changes will automatically be saved back to your Photos library. Abg 1.0 free download for mac.