PowerPhotos 1.1 public beta update
Since many people are anticipating the new merging and copying features in the upcoming PowerPhotos 1.1 release, I wanted to update folks on the progress of the public beta that’s been running for the last few weeks.While not many people were able to try it before El Capitan was released at the end of September, I’ve had a fair number of people testing it out since then. A number of bugs have been found and squashed, but overall things have been pretty stable. I posted another build today (1.1b7) and would like to go through another couple iterations to get as widespread testing as I can before putting it out for general consumption. Anyone who’s interested in trying it out can download it at the link below.
What’s new in PowerPhotos 1.1:
You can now merge multiple Photos libraries together into one, skipping duplicate photos in the process
Albums, moments, or individual photos can be copied from one library to another by drag and drop.
Photo keywords, descriptions, titles, dates, and favorite status are preserved when copying or merging.
You can choose whether you want to copy the current, edited JPG version of each photo, or the unedited original photo instead
Other miscellaneous bug fixes
PowerPhotos beta details
This is beta software. There may very well still be undiscovered bugs that you’ll encounter in using the program. If you want to merge libraries but you’d rather not have to deal with potential bugs, then just wait until the final release is available.
Due to some crucial bugs that were in Photos on OS X Yosemite, but have now been fixed in OS X El Capitan (released on September 30th), PowerPhotos 1.1 will require El Capitan. So, anyone wanting to try out the beta will need to upgrade to El Capitan first.
Make sure to back up your Photos libraries before using the beta. Since there may very well still be bugs that need fixing, so you should make sure to have your data backed up before you dive in. If you use Time Machine or another local backup program, that will work fine, or you can simply make a straight copy of your Photos library, either using the Finder or the “Duplicate Library” command in PowerPhotos.
iCloud Photo Library is not a backup. Any changes you make to the local copy of your library (e.g. by copying new photos into it) will automatically start getting uploaded to your iCloud library, and there will be no easy way to revert your iCloud library to its previous state after doing so. You should have a separate local backup of the library you have set up to sync with iCloud, and if you want to do any work with that library, it’s recommended that you either make a copy of the library first and work with the copy, or disable iCloud syncing while you do your work. Once you’ve finished your work and made sure you approve of the results, you can then reenable iCloud syncing to let Photos upload your new changes.
Since Photos is a bit more restrictive than iPhoto was, there are a few additional limitations to what data can be copied between libraries compared to what was possible with iPhoto. The main limitations are that faces and reversible photo edits will not be preserved when copying photos between libraries. For more details, take a look at the beta documentation.If you encounter any problems while using the PowerPhotos beta, the best way to contact us is by using the “Contact Support” menu item, accessible via the Help menu within the app. This will let you easily submit logs and other configuration information that will help troubleshoot your problem. You can also get in touch at support@fatcatsoftware.com.
Download the PowerPhotos 1.1 beta