Upgrading from PowerPhotos 1.0 or iPhoto Library Manager to PowerPhotos 2.0

PowerPhotos 2.0 was released in 2022 and has a number of major new features and improvements over PowerPhotos 1.0. If you have an existing license for PowerPhotos 1.0 or any version of iPhoto Library Manager, you can receive a 50% discount when upgrading to PowerPhotos 2.0 by entering your old license key when placing your order at https://www.fatcatsoftware.com/store.

If you’re running PowerPhotos 2.0 on a Mac that already has a PowerPhotos 1.0 or iPLM license, the “Upgrade PowerPhotos” button will automatically send your existing license key for you when placing an in-app order.

If you need to retrieve your license info, visit our lost license page.

Here is a summary of the major additions to PowerPhotos 2.0.

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.

Merge/duplicate search reports: PowerPhotos 2.2 introduced a new detailed report when performing a merge, photo/album copy, or duplicate search that allows the user to see which photos were copied, which photos were skipped as duplicates, and which photos couldn’t be copied because of a problem. This helps troubleshoot problems that might occur during a merge or duplicate search.

Conversion of old iPhoto/Aperture libraries: Since Apple dropped support for migrating libraries from iPhoto/Aperture to Photos, PowerPhotos 2.3 and later now have the ability to convert a library from iPhoto or Aperture to Photos.