PowerPhotos 3.0 public beta released
I’ve been hard at work over the past several months on a major new update to PowerPhotos which includes a bunch of new features to enable more direct organization of your libraries right from within PowerPhotos, including editing photo metadata, rearranging albums, advanced searching, and more. The full list of changes can be found at the bottom of this post. Version 3.0 is feature complete at this point, but I’d like to put it through a beta testing period to help work out some of the kinks before doing a final release.
Version 3.0 introduces a number of new features, outlined below, and the public beta can be downloaded by anybody interested in testing it out. This is beta software and may contain bugs. It is highly recommended you back up your photo libraries before trying the PowerPhotos 3.0 beta
Download and installation
You can download the PowerPhotos 3.0 beta to your Mac running macOS Sonoma (14.0) or later. If you already have PowerPhotos 1.x or 2.x on your machine, it’s OK to have both installed on your machine and switch back and forth between them.
Licensing/upgrading
PowerPhotos 3.0 will be a paid upgrade for existing PowerPhotos/iPhoto Library Manager users. The PowerPhotos beta is free to download, but a license is still required to use PowerPhotos advanced features such as merging, copying, deleting duplicates, exporting, and (new!) batch metadata editing. If you already have a PowerPhotos 2.x license, that will work with the PowerPhotos 3.0 beta as well.
If you purchase a new PowerPhotos license now (i.e. on or after October 8th, 2024) that license will automatically be usable with PowerPhotos 3.0 once the final release comes out. Anybody with a PowerPhotos or iPhoto Library Manager license from a prior date will be able to purchase PowerPhotos 3.0 for 50% off the normal price once the final release is out.
Support and feedback
If you encounter any problems or have other feedback while using the PowerPhotos 3.0 beta, please select the “Contact Support” menu item from the Help menu while running PowerPhotos. This will allow you to send logs and other information that will help troubleshoot whatever problem you may be having. If you’re unable to access that menu item, you can also email us at support@fatcatsoftware.com
New features in 3.0
- Keyboard centric metadata editing: A new inspector pane allows for quick editing of photo titles, keywords, and captions, all without taking your hands off the keyboard. After entering values, the tab key can be used to quickly navigate to the next photo without ever having to touch the mouse/trackpad.
- Batch metadata editing: Select a whole group of photos and edit their title, keywords, or captions all at once. You can modify existing metadata with a templating system that lets you include incrementing counters, dates, and other values in the newly entered metadata.
- Upgraded photo browser: The photo browser in PowerPhotos has gotten a major upgrade, and can now do many of the same operations that you can do in Photos. This includes moving photos between albums, deleting photos, and moving, renaming, and deleting albums. The photo browser now also updates live when changes are made to the library, resulting in much faster loading and browsing.
- Advanced multi library search: A new indexing engine allows you to set up complex searches using nested and/or predicates. You can either search one library or multiple libraries at once, and searches can be saved for easy access later on.
- New photo viewer: PowerPhotos now has its own in-window photo viewer instead of using the system Quick Look window. This provides faster loading and navigating, while also still being able to see detailed photo info in the inspector pane.
- Move or copy photos between libraries: In addition to being able to copy photos/albums between libraries, you can now move them instead. When moving photos, PowerPhotos will first copy the albums/photos to the new library, and then delete them from the original library once it’s done.
- Multi library selection support: You can now select multiple libraries in the library list at a time. This provides another way for initiating a merge, duplicate search, or lets you move or delete more than one library at a time.
- Improved undo support: PowerPhotos has added undo support in several additional areas, including its various new editing features, as well as when configuring search predicates and rearranging the library list.