Originally published at: Photos Workbench Helps You Organize, Rate, and Compare Photos - TidBITS
For those who want more organization flexibility and efficiency than Apple’s Photos app provides, Houdah Software’s Photos Workbench provides a handful of targeted features that make the process faster and easier, all while working with your existing Photos library.
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Thanks Julio for the introduction to Photos Workbench. I have to admit I was quite skeptical at first, but it has been a pleasure editing photo metadata with Photos Workbench. The geotagging features are really great. For once geotagging is not a pain but an experience rather like armchair traveling - it was nice to revisit places again on photos and maps.
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Thank you @julio for a thorough review of Photos Workbench.
Photos Workbench actually does allow you to resize the previews in the grid. You can use the two-finger pinch gesture to zoom in and out. The same works for zooming in compare mode. Both images will zoom in sync so you can compare details.
The pinch gesture however is only available to trackpad users. A slider to adjust the zoom level is indeed missing and will be added in an update.
Compare mode can serve many purposes. The process is thus open-ended. When you are done comparing, the top pick remains selected. You can then mark this photo as favorite or move it to a special album. A future version of Photos Workbench should gain the ability to export photos. You could then use compare mode to select the photo to export. In such a workflow, you would not automatically delete the rejects.
You may also want to run the same set of photos through compare mode several times with a different objective. E.g. find the best photo of one person first and in a second go find the best photo of someone else.
Also, you can add ratings to photos along the way. At the end of the compare process, you will have one top pick as well as a few runner-ups marked with star ratings.
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I like that expression. I say I “relive” trips as I retrace my steps while geocoding. “armchair traveling” is a better description of the experience.
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Did anyone else have a problem with the Houdah ‘buy’ button?
You also pointed out to me that users can see all keywords via View > Keyword Manager. Thank you.
It’s working now :-) (What I wanted to know was “how much does this cost?”)
I did purchase this app soon after it became available. It makes it much easier to enter keywords compared to Photos.
Photos Workbench 1.0.2 has added sliders and menu items to zoom the grid view. There is also a slider to synchronously zoom photos in compare mode.
The menu items also work to zoom in when viewing a single photo.
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FYI - Julio’s article is what prompted my to buy this app. Thanks for making my Photo experience better!
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