PowerPhotos 2.0 released, with exporting, library groups, multiple windows, and more
I’m pleased to announce that PowerPhotos 2.0 is now available for download and purchase! This new update has been a long time coming and involved a lot of internal restructuring to better handle iCloud Photos compatibility, improve performance, and enable a lot of new capabilities going forward. Here’s a rundown of what’s new.
Full iCloud Photos support: If you use iCloud Photos, PowerPhotos 1.x was only able to see photos in your library that had already been downloaded to your local hard drive. For users with the “Optimize Mac Storage” option enabled, this could mean a significant portion of your iCloud library would not be visible to PowerPhotos. In PowerPhotos 2.0, it can now see and work with any photos in your iCloud photo library, and will automatically download any photos from iCloud as needed.
Advanced exporting: Photos has an export command, but it is fairly limited in what it can provide. PowerPhotos 2.0 has a new, more fully featured export function with options such as:
- Export as a flat folder or as a folder hierarchy in the Finder that mimics your album hierarchy
- Export unmodified photos, or as JPG, PNG, HEIF, or TIFF of different sizes
- Include captions, dates, keywords, and titles in EXIF metadata
- Retain or strip location metadata
- Optionally include videos from Live Photos and all photos from a burst
- Set Finder creation/modification dates to the photo’s EXIF date
- Video export support as H.264 or H.265
Global menu bar item: Get fast access to your libraries via a global item in your menu bar even when PowerPhotos itself isn’t running.
Library groups: For those with lots of libraries, you can now organize your libraries into groups in the PowerPhotos sidebar.
Multiple windows: You can now open each library in a separate window in PowerPhotos, allowing for easier comparison between libraries, and dragging and dropping photos/albums between libraries.
New duplicate search engine: PowerPhotos 2.0 uses a new duplicate comparison algorithm that can find more duplicate photos which are not quite 100% identical, such as scaled down copies of photos, photos that have been resaved in a different format or with different compression, and even photos with minor edits applied to them.
Faster library loading: The new internal structure in PowerPhotos 2.0 will allow it to load your libraries much faster than PowerPhotos 1.0, especially for users with the “Optimize Mac Storage” option enabled in iCloud Photos.
You can read in more detail about all of PowerPhotos features on the main PowerPhotos page and in the PowerPhotos manual.
Download and installation
You can download PowerPhotos 2.0 to your Mac running macOS Big Sur (11.0) or later and move it to your Applications folder to install it.
Licensing/upgrading
PowerPhotos provides many of its features for free, and purchasing a license will unlock all the features of the app, including unlimited photo copying and merging, deleting duplicate photos, and unlimited exporting.
If you have purchased any previous version of either iPhoto Library Manager or PowerPhotos, then you can enter your old serial number when purchasing on our online store to receive a 50% discount. Additionally, any PowerPhotos license purchased on April 6, 2022 or later will automatically work with PowerPhotos 2.0 without any upgrade necessary.