Photo editing gets easier with iOS 8's new Photos app and extensions
Capturing photos isn't the only image-related process to get a boost in iOS 8. Apple's latest mobile operating system also makes postprocessing easier and more powerful, with a new Photos app and the addition of editing extensions.
The iOS Photos app has long had rudimentary editing tools, but they were just that -- rudimentary. Most seasoned photographers turned to apps like VSCO Cam, Photoshop Touch, and Snapseed for their more advanced features and left the stock Photos app behind.
Apple has taken steps to change that in iOS 8, supercharging the Photos app's default editing suite and giving developers the ability to extend it with app extensions.
After choosing a photo and dropping into edit mode, tapping the
button on the left will bring up the newly-enhanced composition tools. In this mode, Photos will automatically try to straighten and crop images that aren't perfectly framed.
To alter the angle, grab the angle selector -- the round, dotted semicircle -- and drag up and down. If you don't like the changes, you can tap the blue "Reset" button that appears to the left of the angle selector, and it will return to the original state.
If you like the angle, but want to change the crop, just start dragging the white crop lines that surround the picture. Photos will automatically overlay a thirds grid, and taking your finger off of the display for one second will set the crop and reconfigure the editing view.
Photos in iOS 8 also includes new smart adjustments. Tapping the
button presents three options: Light, Color, and B&W.
Adjustments are made using what Apple calls a "smart slider." The slider previews the image with a range of values, and you simply drag the slider side-to-side to alter the image.
In the background, Photos will intelligently adjust values like saturation, exposure, brightness, and contrast as you slide. You can also adjust each value individually by tapping the disclosure triangle on the right side of the list, then tapping the value you want to change.
Apple has caved to the Instagram craze by adding a set of built-in filters to the Photos app. As with the other editing tools, tapping the
button displays a scrollable list of nine Apple-designed filters; tap a filter to apply, and use the "None" option to remove them.
You aren't limited to the default filters, either. With the new editing tools extensions, apps like Litely and Fragment can make their own editing interfaces and filters available directly within Photos, so users never need to leave the app.
Like iOS 8's other extensions, photo editing extensions can't be installed separately --?they must have a parent app. To make them available for use in Photos, tap the
icon in the lower right, then tap the "More" button and slide the on/off switch to enable them.
You can then access the additional editing interfaces at any time using the more button. The editor will slide in over top of the default Photos user interface; make your adjustments, than tap the Done button to save or the Cancel button to discard your changes.
The iOS Photos app has long had rudimentary editing tools, but they were just that -- rudimentary. Most seasoned photographers turned to apps like VSCO Cam, Photoshop Touch, and Snapseed for their more advanced features and left the stock Photos app behind.
Apple has taken steps to change that in iOS 8, supercharging the Photos app's default editing suite and giving developers the ability to extend it with app extensions.
Built-in adjustments
After choosing a photo and dropping into edit mode, tapping the
button on the left will bring up the newly-enhanced composition tools. In this mode, Photos will automatically try to straighten and crop images that aren't perfectly framed. To alter the angle, grab the angle selector -- the round, dotted semicircle -- and drag up and down. If you don't like the changes, you can tap the blue "Reset" button that appears to the left of the angle selector, and it will return to the original state.
If you like the angle, but want to change the crop, just start dragging the white crop lines that surround the picture. Photos will automatically overlay a thirds grid, and taking your finger off of the display for one second will set the crop and reconfigure the editing view.
Photos in iOS 8 also includes new smart adjustments. Tapping the
button presents three options: Light, Color, and B&W. Adjustments are made using what Apple calls a "smart slider." The slider previews the image with a range of values, and you simply drag the slider side-to-side to alter the image.
In the background, Photos will intelligently adjust values like saturation, exposure, brightness, and contrast as you slide. You can also adjust each value individually by tapping the disclosure triangle on the right side of the list, then tapping the value you want to change.
Filters & Extensions
Apple has caved to the Instagram craze by adding a set of built-in filters to the Photos app. As with the other editing tools, tapping the
button displays a scrollable list of nine Apple-designed filters; tap a filter to apply, and use the "None" option to remove them.You aren't limited to the default filters, either. With the new editing tools extensions, apps like Litely and Fragment can make their own editing interfaces and filters available directly within Photos, so users never need to leave the app.
Like iOS 8's other extensions, photo editing extensions can't be installed separately --?they must have a parent app. To make them available for use in Photos, tap the
icon in the lower right, then tap the "More" button and slide the on/off switch to enable them.You can then access the additional editing interfaces at any time using the more button. The editor will slide in over top of the default Photos user interface; make your adjustments, than tap the Done button to save or the Cancel button to discard your changes.
Comments
The loss of camera roll makes organization awful. Also, now I can't tell what photos are on Photostream. They're all mixed in with photos I synced from my computer. I tried to clear the camera, iPhoto didn't recognize the duplicates from photos I have already imported and reimported them anyways. Not being able to view my whole camera roll and the entire camera roll from within the Camera app is also a huge fail.
Sigh.
You are missing iCloud Photo Library. It was pulled at the last minute. I don't know why. But it has royally ****ed users who don't understand what the Photos tab shows.
To be honest with you, I don't know what the Photos tab shows you, if you don't have iCloud Photo Library enabled. A confusing mess I imagine.
Wasn't Apple going to discontinue iPhoto and Aperture for OS X in OS 10.10 Yosemite?
Thanks for the post. I basically understood what the IOS8 image management was about when explained how it would work and I thought "This sounds awful". Your throwing some further clarity of it as implemented makes it even closer to a system I won't touch until all the sound of a million foreheads being slapped brings some changes.
Thanks. Not upgrading.
I'm a pro photographer and I move a lot of photos around. Even if Apple had rolled out this whole system intact it would still be a horrible, insulting and deeply broken "solution."
Apple likes to show professionals using iOS devices in their ads, however in reality, their focus is 99% on regular consumers. I can certainly understand your frustration. It would probably be best in your situation to turn off iCloud for photos.
I do a lot of professional photography as well, among other things, but I don't use iOS for any of that. I always use my Mac and pro cameras. Playing around with the iOS 8 Photos app today on an iPhone, it seems very handy for casual amateur photography, however every photo on there was taken with the iPhone camera so it is actually quite well organized automatically.
How do you copy an image url in Safari in ios 8? If I long press on an image I get a copy option but it does nothing. If I try to paste into Safari address bar I don't get paste option; nothing happens. Is that a bug?
If you are on a web page that has an image, you press and hold until there is an option to "Open" then just copy the URL from the location field. Copy only serves if you want to paste the image somewhere like a document or email.
There is no open option. I used to be able to select copy and then paste in the address bar and it would paste the image url. From there I could copy that and then paste that url anywhere. Doesn't seem to work any more.
The new Photos app is a bust for me. On my MacBook Pro, iPhoto keeps all of my 11K-plus photos sorted by Events, and the Events are displayed as sorted alphabetically. That is how Events appeared in the old version of the iOS Photos app, but not anymore. They now just show up in random order. I tried deleting all photos from my phone and resyncing it, but nothing changed.
There is no open option. I used to be able to select copy and then paste in the address bar and it would paste the image url. From there I could copy that and then paste that url anywhere. Doesn't seem to work any more.
If the image is part of a Javascript slide show, a background to a <div> or if the page is specially formatted for iOS using "viewport" all could cause that behavior. A regular image on a regular web page should show you the "Open" option.
What's the difference between Photo Stream and iCloud Photos at this point?
My understanding is that iCloud Photos replaced Photo stream, and the difference between the two is that Photo Stream was used for syncing between different devices on the same iCloud account with only up to 1000 photos and up to 30 days worth of photos being in the iCloud storage for each account, while the older photos had been pushed out of Photo Stream and were only residing locally on each device that syncs to the Photo Stream. With iCloud Photos, it seems that every photo is stored in iCloud as well as on each device that's synced to the same iCloud account. So, the photos now count against the storage quota on the iCloud account, but iCloud can now be used as a cloud storage for the entire photo library and not just as a temporary storage that allows syncing of other devices on the same iCloud account.
In light of this, I don't understand the complaint that all photos are now stored in the same place in IOS and there's no distinction between photos taken on that particular iOS device vs photos synced from iCloud. If all the devices are on the same iCloud account, they are assumed to belong to the same person or couple; therefore, these ARE family photos, and they should absolutely be stored in the same place in both iOS and in OS X. Photos have metadata, such as location, date, etc., which should allow them to be sorted based on these criteria. Why does it matter if you took a particular picture or if your spouse did (especially if you are traveling together). Both of you will have all the photos from that trip in the same place, and they can be all pulled up by the location or the date. That's exactly how the photos should be organized.
In fact, Apple has been trying to depart from the old directory structure to the metadata-based organizational structure even in OS X. Take iTunes for example, where the interface exposed to the user has no connection to folders and instead uses metadata tags for songs, which can be used for sorting the audio collection based on the album, author, composer, etc. Such flexibility is impossible when using folders as everything is sorted statically based on one pre-defined criterion.
Perhaps it would be nice to have a tag on the picture that would link the picture to the particular devices' UUID, so that one could sort the pictures based on which device it was taken, but there's still no reason whatsoever to have a separate Camera Roll.
Of course, there should be a way to move photos to "albums" or "events", which is nothing more than assigning a metadata tag with the name of the "album" or "event" and then sorting the pictures based on that metadata tag - similar to labels in gmail or smart mailboxes in Apple Mail.
Incidentally, the fact that iPhoto for OS X doesn't sync properly with new Photos for iOS is due to the fact that iPhoto for iOS is being deprecated with OS 10.10 Yosemite, and instead the Photos app for OS X will be part of OS 10.10. Once Yosemite comes out, the new Photos app should be able to sync properly with the iOS 8 Photos app (via iCloud), and both libraries could be organized similarly using metadata tags embedded in photographs.
What's the difference between Photo Stream and iCloud Photos at this point?
My understanding is that iCloud Photos replaced Photo stream, and the difference between the two is that Photo Stream was used for syncing between different devices on the same iCloud account with only up to 1000 photos and up to 30 days worth of photos being in the iCloud storage for each account, while the older photos had been pushed out of Photo Stream and were only residing locally on each device that syncs to the Photo Stream. With iCloud Photos, it seems that every photo is stored in iCloud as well as on each device that's synced to the same iCloud account. So, the photos now count against the storage quota on the iCloud account, but iCloud can now be used as a cloud storage for the entire photo library and not just as a temporary storage that allows syncing of other devices on the same iCloud account.
In light of this, I don't understand the complaint that all photos are now stored in the same place in IOS and there's no distinction between photos taken on that particular iOS device vs photos synced from iCloud. If all the devices are on the same iCloud account, they are assumed to belong to the same person or couple; therefore, these ARE family photos, and they should absolutely be stored in the same place in both iOS and in OS X. Photos have metadata, such as location, date, etc., which should allow them to be sorted based on these criteria. Why does it matter if you took a particular picture or if your spouse did (especially if you are traveling together). Both of you will have all the photos from that trip in the same place, and they can be all pulled up by the location or the date. That's exactly how the photos should be organized.
In fact, Apple has been trying to depart from the old directory structure to the metadata-based organizational structure even in OS X. Take iTunes for example, where the interface exposed to the user has no connection to folders and instead uses metadata tags for songs, which can be used for sorting the audio collection based on the album, author, composer, etc. Such flexibility is impossible when using folders as everything is sorted statically based on one pre-defined criterion.
Perhaps it would be nice to have a tag on the picture that would link the picture to the particular devices' UUID, so that one could sort the pictures based on which device it was taken, but there's still no reason whatsoever to have a separate Camera Roll.
Of course, there should be a way to move photos to "albums" or "events", which is nothing more than assigning a metadata tag with the name of the "album" or "event" and then sorting the pictures based on that metadata tag - similar to labels in gmail or smart mailboxes in Apple Mail.
iCloud Photo Library did not make the release. No word from Apple why it was pulled. But it has been pulled from marketing as well.
The way it works is brilliant and how it always should have been. But, alas, it is strangely not available to most who upgraded, and those without it have mismatch of what was originally intended..
Aside from the organizational issues, I really like that editing interface.
iCloud Photo Library did not make the release. No word from Apple why it was pulled. But it has been pulled from marketing as well.
The way it works is brilliant and how it always should have been. But, alas, it is strangely not available to most who upgraded, and those without it have mismatch of what was originally intended..
This was pulled most likely due to the fact that Photos for IOS 8 doesn't sync properly with iPhoto or Aperture for OS X. Both iPhoto and Aperture have been deprecated, and OS X Yosemite will be released with iPhoto replaced by the Photos app for OS X, which should work seamlessly for syncing with the Photos app in iOS 8 via iCloud Photo Library.
By the way, what's happening with iPhoto for iOS in iOS 8? Is it still available? Did they change anything in iPhoto for iOS? To me, any photo editor in iOS enabled for extensions should use the Photos library as the repository of all the photos. So that these other apps do not keep their own photo library independently from the Photos app. This would make syncing between the iOS and the OS X platforms seamless using the iCloud Photo Library, and the syncing can be done not only with the original proofs, but also with the edited versions of the photographs, regardless of which photo-eidting app has made those edits.
iPhoto for iOS is already gone. Aperture won't go anywhere anytime soon. Heck, there's an update coming which supposedly is optimised for OSX10.10. It won't suddenly stop working, there just won't be any features added by Apple. 3rd party is a different story.
For more info on the subject:
Apple will no longer develop Aperture or iPhoto, OS X Yosemite Photos app to serve as replacement
http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/180972/apple-will-no-longer-develop-aperture-or-iphoto-os-x-yosemite-photos-app-to-serve-as-replacement