At WWDC, iOS 13 may get the photo management update it needs

Posted:
in iOS edited April 2019
A new report has highlighted several new features and changes predicted to be announced at WWDC for iOS 13 and macOS 10.15. Most notably, it appears that Apple will finally be implementing a new image flow when importing photos from external media.

iOS 12 iPad photo import process
iOS 12 iPad photo import process


The way iOS has managed photos has been troublesome since its inception. When shooting a series of photos, the images cannot be imported directly into editing apps such as Pixelmator Photo or Adobe Lightroom -- they must first go to the Apple Photos app.

This often yields an overflow of raw images dumped into the photo app that must then be imported into an editing or management app before exporting edited favorites back to the original Photos app. It results in a lot of clutter.

That may be all set to change with iOS 13. Thanks to a new developer-facing API, third-party apps will now be able to import media directly from external media such as SD cards before saving them directly into the app. This could be a photo editing app or perhaps a storage app.






This would give us the option to import all of our RAW photos directly off our camera into Box or the Files app, edit our best ones in our editing app of choice, then export and save those directly to the Photos app for sharing. This will simplify workflows and reduce the barrage of surplus images seen in the Photos app.

Similarly, Apple looks like it will be opening up the document scanning API for developers. Currently, in iOS, users can scan a document right from the Notes app. With iOS 13, developers can tap into this and bring this functionality to their own apps without having to rely on third-party packages to make it happen.

In 2018, Apple improved the import workflow for photographers significantly with iOS 12, finally allowing imported photos to go directly into an existing or new album, the progress to be viewed during import, it can take advantage of USB 3.0 speeds, and much more.

The report that predicted the photo import enhancements, also included a few other features. As with every other WWDC, older features that Apple had tight control over are predicted for wider developer access, including increased developer access to NFC, more augmented reality improvements, and lots of enhancements to the Marzipan framework for porting iOS apps to macOS which are essentially required for Apple News+ and Apple Arcade to work on the Mac.

There are also several new Siri Intents coming available including media playback, search, voice calling, event ticketing, message attachment, train trip, flight, airport gate, and seat information. Developers integrating those into their apps add much more functionality to Siri than exists already.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 16
    rcfarcfa Posts: 1,124member
    It isn’t true, that one must go through Photos.app.
    There has been for ages an alternative: Image Capture.app, which allows importing images from iPhones or external media into whatever folder desired.
    macpluspluswatto_cobra
  • Reply 2 of 16
    Not my Issue but sounds good.
    rcfa said:
    It isn’t true, that one must go through Photos.app.
    There has been for ages an alternative: Image Capture.app, which allows importing images from iPhones or external media into whatever folder desired.
    You may not have understood point. It is about importing images from camera like DSLR info iPhone or iPad. Not to Mac.
    edited April 2019 chasmsphericwatto_cobra
  • Reply 3 of 16
    WWDC 2 things for me, fingers crossed....

    open up USB on iPad pro
    improve drastically Siri


  • Reply 4 of 16
    Great improvement but what use is it to have RAW capability if you are forced to save the final edit to a lower quality, compressed JPG? The ability of saving sidecar files with edits is crucial to photographers and editors, and yet one has to rely on syncing them to a secondary machine to get this result. Broken workflow to say the least.
  • Reply 5 of 16
    wood1208wood1208 Posts: 2,905member
    WWDC is mainly software event but hope some hardware announcements like 2019 Macbook/PRO based on 10nm Intel chips, If anything makes me happy is adding text draft save to iMessage and move the last text message on top of list if started to write. In a nutshell just like the Google's Message App.
  • Reply 6 of 16
    cornchipcornchip Posts: 1,945member
    elfig2012 said:
    WWDC 2 things for me, fingers crossed....

    open up USB on iPad pro
    improve drastically Siri



    you're going to have difficulty using spoons for a while.
    elfig2012kruegdude
  • Reply 7 of 16
    hexclockhexclock Posts: 1,243member
    frantisek said:
    Not my Issue but sounds good.
    rcfa said:
    It isn’t true, that one must go through Photos.app.
    There has been for ages an alternative: Image Capture.app, which allows importing images from iPhones or external media into whatever folder desired.
    You may not have understood point. It is about importing images from camera like DSLR info iPhone or iPad. Not to Mac.
    The article‘s title and first paragraph mention MacOS, so I can see reason for the confusion. 
    edited April 2019 watto_cobra
  • Reply 8 of 16
    eightzeroeightzero Posts: 3,056member
    Fingers crossed for this. "The way iOS has managed photos has been troublesome since its inception" is something of an understatement. I sorta get the intent to make everything require iCloud, because Apple can make money off that, but making *everything* go there has always baffled me. 
  • Reply 9 of 16
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    We've only been importing media directly to apps on Macs for 30+ years.  iOS took 13 generation to deliver this feature.  Think about that. 


    Every time Tim Cook says "The iPad is our clearest expression of computing" I laugh.....then I go to my room and cry a little. 
    entropyscgWerks
  • Reply 10 of 16
    Still waiting for an option to consolidate and unify a family shared iCloud Photo Library.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 11 of 16
    cgWerkscgWerks Posts: 2,952member
    eightzero said:
    ... I sorta get the intent to make everything require iCloud, because Apple can make money off that, but making *everything* go there has always baffled me. 
    Yeah, I'll pay for iCloud space if that is what is required to make things work. But, I want more control over things, not a 'dancing paperclip' type experience that Apple seems determined to force everyone into these days. I want to pick which images go to the shared cloud, as well as have a thumbnail library of what is in the cloud, with the ability to pick which of the cloud items gets pulled local.

    And, also, since I don't trust clouds (and especially sync'ing), I want the ability to have the master library live somewhere outside the cloud, be able to make backups, etc.

    hmurchison said:
    Every time Tim Cook says "The iPad is our clearest expression of computing" I laugh.....then I go to my room and cry a little. 
    No doubt. I think 'clearest' here means most simpleton and cash-cow in type.

    Still waiting for an option to consolidate and unify a family shared iCloud Photo Library.
    Yeah, same here. My image library is kind of out of control right now (ie: non-existent as a library anymore). I'm thinking about trying Plex (once I get some time to experiment), but I'm a bit afraid given their dorky implementation of sync'ing video (their core thing, one would think) requiring transcoding by the server (instead of just transfer). It also seems there is no one home there, and no good way to communicate with them. That scares me.
  • Reply 12 of 16
    The biggest update for photo management that is needed is family sharing of entire catalogues. 
  • Reply 13 of 16
    sphericspheric Posts: 2,544member
    We've only been importing media directly to apps on Macs for 30+ years.  iOS took 13 generation to deliver this feature.  Think about that. 


    Every time Tim Cook says "The iPad is our clearest expression of computing" I laugh.....then I go to my room and cry a little. 
    The point of a new platform is to strip away everything and then slowly add the necessary things once you’ve figured out if there is a better way to do it than there used to be. 

    „We‘ve been able to do X on our computers for decades — let’s just do that“ is what resulted in Windows CE, if you’re old enough to remember that. 

    It died virtually overnight once the iPhone (which could do laughably little by comparison) showed the world — and the industry — that it was worth throwing everything out and rethinking it. 
  • Reply 14 of 16
    cgWerkscgWerks Posts: 2,952member
    spheric said:
    The point of a new platform is to strip away everything and then slowly add the necessary things once you’ve figured out if there is a better way to do it than there used to be. 

    „We‘ve been able to do X on our computers for decades — let’s just do that“ is what resulted in Windows CE, if you’re old enough to remember that. 

    It died virtually overnight once the iPhone (which could do laughably little by comparison) showed the world — and the industry — that it was worth throwing everything out and rethinking it. 
    I sort of agree, but there is also a bit of common sense required. We're still waiting on basic functionality in many ways that people were complaining about since those early versions of iOS. In terms of big things, yes, maybe they are taking that long to re-think them? (ie: file system access). But, for many other things, it seems like the people (if they exist) working on them just haven't used the apps they built... like Calendar still not being able to quickly duplicate an event (as you can do on macOS). (Or, have you happened to use the new Voice Memos app? Who let that out of beta?)
  • Reply 15 of 16
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    spheric said:
    We've only been importing media directly to apps on Macs for 30+ years.  iOS took 13 generation to deliver this feature.  Think about that. 


    Every time Tim Cook says "The iPad is our clearest expression of computing" I laugh.....then I go to my room and cry a little. 
    The point of a new platform is to strip away everything and then slowly add the necessary things once you’ve figured out if there is a better way to do it than there used to be. 

    „We‘ve been able to do X on our computers for decades — let’s just do that“ is what resulted in Windows CE, if you’re old enough to remember that. 

    It died virtually overnight once the iPhone (which could do laughably little by comparison) showed the world — and the industry — that it was worth throwing everything out and rethinking it. 

    I think it's highly debatable that Apple has created better tools. It appears that Apple has revamped frameworks and systems to work on mobile and then bring that over to Macs.  This is evinced by the lack of performant software.  We have 16-core processors,  SSD storage that does GBs per second, GPU that crunch many teraflops and computing still feels slow because Microsoft and Apple keep patching the same crusty codebases. 
  • Reply 16 of 16
    cgWerkscgWerks Posts: 2,952member
    hmurchison said:
    I think it's highly debatable that Apple has created better tools. It appears that Apple has revamped frameworks and systems to work on mobile and then bring that over to Macs.
    Yeah, I'm actually a bit concerned about the future of software on the Mac... though maybe it will work in reverse and the push to make iOS type stuff work with the Mac crowd could make iOS apps better, too? There is a lot of development talent over in the iOS world, no doubt. But, what remains to be seen is if that talent can produce the kind of apps, UI, and workflows needed on the Mac. (And, if the UI kits from the iOS side will be properly expanded to even fit the Mac.)

    I guess I fear getting a bunch of 'Voice Memos' apps on the Mac and that considered being good enough.
    hmurchison
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