PowerPhotos 2.2 released with new duplicate rules, merge report, and more

PowerPhotos 2.2 was released today and contains a number of new improvements that I’m excited to share.

Merge report

When setting up and previewing a merge, there is now a new report screen that gets shown before proceeding to do the actual merge. The report shows how many photos and videos are in each library being merged, how many of them will be copied into the merged library, how many duplicate photos were in each library that will be skipped, and the total number of items that will be in the merged library after it’s complete. You can still see a detailed preview of what the merged library will look like in the “Preview” tab, but I think this new report will give a better overview of what will actually happen when you run the merge.

New duplicate rules

When you perform a duplicate search, PowerPhotos lets you set up a custom rule that allows you to automatically choose which photo to keep from each group of duplicates based on a number of criteria. Version 2.2 adds several new criteria options, including the ability to choose based on the presence of a particular keyword on the photo (up to now you could only choose based on the number of keywords on each photo). This can be a handy shortcut for any situation where the other criteria don’t quite do what you’re looking for. If you can collect all the photos you want to keep (or not keep) in an album in Photos then tag them all with a custom keyword, you can then use that as a proxy for whether the photo is in that group you put together in your library. You can also set up a rule to choose based on whether the photo’s title, caption, or filename contains a particular piece of text.

Album membership

In PowerPhotos 2.2, you can now see which albums a particular photo in your library belongs to. If you select a photo in the browser, the info pane in the lower left will now list the names of all the albums the photo belongs to. You can also control-click on a photo, and there will be a “Show in Album” submenu that lists the albums the photo belongs to and lets you select that album in the album list.

License window redesign

The new version also features a redesign of the window where you enter your license key when you purchase PowerPhotos, listing the features you get by purchasing a license. I’ve also simplified the terminology used with respect to licensing, getting rid of the terms “registration” and “serial number” in favor of always using the terms “license” or “license key”.

PowerPhotos 2.2 is a free update, and it does increase the minimum system requirement from macOS 11 (Big Sur) up to macOS 12 (Monterey). Users already running 2.x can use the “Check For Updates” menu item within the app to download and install the new version, or grab the latest version from the PowerPhotos web page. If you’re still running Big Sur, you can always download the previous version of PowerPhotos (2.1.7) from the older downloads page on our website.