iPhoto for Mac

Quick update and how to get the replacement app

Apple no longer supports iPhoto. Its successor is Photos for Mac, which is available free with an upgrade to OS X Yosemite. If your Mac already runs Yosemite, open the Mac App Store and check for updates to download Photos for Mac.

What iPhoto used to be

iPhoto was Apple’s desktop application for organizing, viewing and sharing still images. As an alternative to apps like Picasa, it combined photo management with tight integration into Apple services such as iCloud and Maps.

Organization, search and layout tools

The app’s strengths were its library organization and presentation features. You could group pictures by events, produce galleries, and order print products like calendars and photo books. A unified search let you locate images by date, filename, keywords — and later versions even supported face recognition.

Integration with other Apple tools

iPhoto worked closely with other Apple software: for example, images could be used directly in iDVD and other editing workflows. One annoyance was full-screen viewing, which required several extra clicks and made it awkward to hide the toolbar.

Viewing, slideshows and library management

Built-in montage and slideshow templates — complete with background music — were a simple way to relive photo collections. On the downside, iPhoto’s tendency to build a single large library file could be inconvenient if you already kept many gigabytes of images, because it consumed additional disk space.

Recent improvements, fixes and enhancements

• Improved handling for shared photo streams: videos can now be posted to shared streams, multiple people can add to a shared stream, and the comment sheet behaves correctly when sharing many photos.
• Resolved problems that caused photos synced from Facebook or Flickr to be duplicated or reposted.
• Fixed cases where images coming from Flickr displayed rotated incorrectly after syncing.
• Addressed an issue where certain color profiles made photos look wrong on iOS devices after iCloud sharing.
• Corrected an error that reported the wrong file type or size for imported TIFF and PSD files.
• Prevented a crash that could occur when sharing an edited image from a MacBook Pro with Retina display.
• Added compatibility with iOS 7 camera filters for images imported from iOS devices.
• Reworked the printing workflow with a cleaner, more streamlined print interface.
• Replaced the old Create menu with an updated Share menu that consolidates all sharing and print-product options (books, cards, calendars).
• Captions are now synced to Facebook albums instead of internal version names for newly created albums.
• You can now manage privacy settings when posting photos from iPhoto to a Facebook Timeline.
• Flickr sharing now supports videos up to three minutes in length.
• URLs placed in photo comment fields become clickable links.
• Improved reliability when working with custom Places locations on the map.
• Made copy-and-paste of photos into a new event more dependable.
• When a single photo in an album is selected, using the Trash command from the contextual menu removes it from that album rather than deleting it from the overall library.
• Added 64-bit compatibility for the application.
• Various stability tweaks and performance optimizations to make the app more reliable overall.